Fire and Ice
by DarkFey
Summary: Sera, a normal college freshman seeking what little fun life has to offer in her books and her drawings, her games and her writings, is suddenly and brutally savaged by the oddest snow-globe-carrying elf in the world. Her world, at least, because whatever planet the pile of snow she lands in belongs to certainly has more to offer than a simple elf. M for language/violence.
1. A Near-Death Experience Per Day

Sera closed her eyes in bliss, half of which was due to her indulged caramel frappuccino—icy in the heat which cursed the entire damned bottom part of the U.S. The other half was caused by the sheer joy she experienced from being away from her dysfunctional family. Ah, the benefits of being eighteen: she never had to return to the damned apartments she had spent her childhood moving to and fro from, she never had to tolerate the stupid assholes in her household anymore, she never had to go to court-ordered family therapy again (praise the Lord!), and, best of all, she could live on the opposite side of the country without fear of being accused of addiction every time she so much suggested she felt like drinking a cup of coffee.

Life. Was. Good.

She strolled over to the outdoors sitting area in view of most of the cute little shops there and took a seat near the fountain. Once in the shade of the umbrella at the table, she let out a sigh of relief. Here, she could relax in the sweltering heat that barely relented even in the midst of winter. Here, she could sit in peace, admire cute children without being annoyed by them, and internally snicker at their flustered adults. Here, she could kick back and enjoy life. She wiped her hand wet with condensation on her jean shorts, hooking back her hair from her sunglasses and knotting it into a bun to expose her neck to the faint breeze. She sipped her drink and unzipped her computer case. She pulled out her laptop.

And _here _was where she found the most respite. Here, in this eighteen-inch hardcore heavy-duty piece of electronic perfection, she could find what she couldn't in real life. The sweep of a digital brush creating epic pictures, the literary divinity found in the adventure of storytelling. What craving left dissatisfied by the harsh... _reality _of real life could be fulfilled in books, in games, in drawing. She plugged in her headphones, streaming Three Days Grace from Youtube and tapped her stylus against the screen of her drawing tablet as she lazily eyed her surroundings. Whatever responsibilities she had—her job, her bills, what she was doing with her life—could be ignored at the simple press of the power button. She sipped her frappuccino, looking around for a potential subject to crack her art-creating knuckles at.

That was when she saw the Christmas ornament.

It was actually relatively big, for an ornament. The shiny snow globe was empty inside, but a cute little plastic elf with curiously rabbit-like ears and a red suit reminiscent of Santa Claus was holding it. She squinted at it from behind the brown tint of her sunglasses.

"Alright, who's the lazy store manager screwed up majorly in taking down his decorations?" she muttered to herself. "For God's sake, it's been four months since Christmas. And I thought _I_ procrastinated." She stood up, glanced warily about for any hobos who might snatch her laptop and coffee, and darted for the ornament. Nearing the fountain's rim, she snatched it up by it's jingly hat—cloth, not plastic—and ran back to her table. Almost disappointed she didn't get to shake her fist and curse hobos, she dropped the ornament on her table. The globe then proceeded to detach from the elf's hands and landed on her foot.

She winced, more at the inevitable breaking of the globe than at the pain, cursing under her breath. _Shitty manufactured glue,_ she thought. Crouching, she held it before her eyes. Oddly enough, it hadn't even cracked, much less shattered. With a sigh, she sat back down in her chair, somehow-invulnerable snow globe in hand to carefully balance in the elf's hands.

There was no elf.

She blinked. The elf didn't magically reappear. She blinked again. Damned defected blinks. Blinked again. And _then_ she saw the elf, except it wasn't back on the table where she had put it. It was climbing up her leg with little grabby hands pinching her skin, reaching for the globe in her hand. _Huh. This is actually a damned good mechanical toy._ She watched with only a raised eyebrow because that was what bad ass people did; that is, until the elf started beating the arm she held the globe with a silver trumpet-thingy that came from nowhere.

"Son of a bitch!" She grabbed at the elf with her free hand and pulled it away from her, instinctively raising the globe out of his reach. With no time to spare wondering what she looked like to the other people lounging around the tables, she dropped the elf on the floor, standing up to back away from it. Only the elf was a persistent bugger, and latched onto her foot. She shook her leg to get him off, wildly flailing on one foot.

Then he bit her.

She lost her balance, hard, and as she fell she closed her eyes so that she wouldn't have to witness how much of an idiot she looked like. _Please, please don't let my coffee spill on my laptop. I will believe in you, God, for a whole minute if you do. I'll even leave cookies for Santa, like a good girl. I'll clean my room, vacuum the floor, abstain from coffee for a month—no, a week. No, who am I kidding? It's not like you—_

And God laughed at her, in his wise and almighty way that was supposed to grant some precious insight, some awe-inspiring revelation. Because instead of spilling on her laptop, it spilled on her in a rush of icy cold. Only it wasn't caramel-sweet goodness that exploded over her in a burst of freezing chill against her heated, sweaty skin.

It was snow.

Snow, you know? The stuff that's fluffy and white? That comes maybe once every four to ten years? The stuff that makes winter the best season ever, in addition to being able to rock a pair of long-sleeves for once? You know, the stuff that you make snowmen, snow angels, snow balls, snow forts... snow-snow out of? The stuff that you absolutely _don't_ want to touch at all when yellow? _That's _what she landed in. Not hard cement, snow. Which made as much sense as a sexually appealing flamingo singing Rick Astley, because it didn't snow. Not in April. Not in cowboy country south. Not in a place that was eighty degrees in late November.

Her eyes flew open as the air shimmered about her like steam rising from boiling water. The elf, where was the elf? Where was _she_? More importantly, where was the laptop that she had spent a thousand big ones on out of her own pocket? Where were the shops, the people, the tables?

Where was her fucking frappuccino?!

She pushed herself up, wiping off the snow that was quickly melting on her heat-scorched skin. Pulling her suddenly frost-encrusted sunglasses off, she wildly looked around for the elf. She saw him, a few yards away. Smiling. With the globe.

And then she _did_ shake her fist and curse, with modernized vulgarity rather than archaic, flowery phrases, because the elf just laughed at her attempts to stumble over in the freezing snow. It made absurd jumping motions, the snow inside the globe swirling around a faint mirage of a structure she was too far away to see. Her fingers reached for the stupid, _stupid_ elf, but it stepped away from her reach into the swirling mass of warped air behind it. She lunged. Too slow.

It was gone, and so was the crazy swirl that made her wonder if she needed therapy of a different kind. Leaving her stranded in a pile of snow left scattered in her frantic wake, without her laptop, without her coffee, without any clue as to how she was wherever she was. Without socks or sneakers or long pants or even a goddamned jacket.

Priorities. Priorities first. She stood up, her survival instincts kicking in. She had survived eighteen years of bat-crazy kin. She could survive this. The cold burned at her exposed skin as she took inventory of what she had. Jean shorts, mid-thigh. Black flip-flops. White t-shirt. Sunglasses, so she could freeze to death in style. Cell phone, wallet, keys to a car and a house that were beyond that damned swirly snow globe. She pulled her hair out of its improvised chignon, returning her trembling hands already red from the cold to their crossed position tight against her shivering self. She needed a jacket, preferably two, if she was going to live through the next hour. Only when she looked around for the closest clothing shop did she notice the group of kids shell-shocked at either her sudden, unexplained appearance and attire or at her round of unabashed cussing. Oops.

"None of you heard that," she told them sternly. One of them, a boy with particularly wide brown eyes stared at her, and she stared back, willing for her magical hypnotizing powers to pass through her sunglasses and make him forget that he had suddenly just expanded his vocabulary quite a bit. Hopefully there were no parents around. Hopefully.

"S-sledding?" A girl asked of the brown-eyed boy who was just about as cute as annoying little boys got. Nervous glances were passed around.

"Why are you dressed like that? Are you drunk?" said a particularly bulky and mean-looking girl with short, brown hair.

"Um, Cupcake..." The nerdy blonde boy immediately shut up at her glare.

"No, no, children," Sera said in a dignified tone of voice, "it's quite alright. As a matter of fact, I am not actually drunk. I'm making a fashion statement."

"A dumb one."

Sera shrugged at the impertinent girl. "Seeing that my stylish attire is clearly unappreciated, I shall take myself to the nearest clothing store and purchase new garb to vesture myself in clothing adequate to your silly mainstream tastes." She smiled beatifically at them.

There was a silence.

"...What?" One offered in tentative, unanimous confusion.

"Fare thee well, young children!" She sang, turning around with a wave. Her bravado lasted as long as it took to get out of their stunned line-of-sights before she broke out in a run for the nearest store. She slipped through the automatic doors and ran into the blessed warmth of air conditioned shop, and realized that there _was_ a God, albeit one with a twisted, sick sense of humor.

She walked out of the store with a new pair of skinny jeans, socks, boots, winter accessories, and a beautiful black trench coat she had admittedly splurged on. If there was a time to spend, it was now, when she had no idea where the hell she was or what she was going to do. At least she was warm. Her numb self thawing out in the depths of her coat, she felt a little less miserable and a little less like she was going insane. She would get through this. Find a bank, catch a bus home. Or a plane. Or a magical snow globe carried around by insane elves. She reminded herself of her priorities. There would be enough time to wonder what the fuck was going on on her trip home.

She was debating whether or not she should pull a time-machine/transportation-device "Hey-random-stranger-what-year-is-it-I-mean-place-is-this-IT-WORKED!" when the boy whose cuteness she had so admired just a few minutes before slid past her on his sled. In the middle of the street. In the middle of a _slew of cars_. And holy Ronald McDonald, little boys did not sled through an intersection of moving cars without dying.

Sigh.

No time to wait for the pedestrian light. She sprinted past said pedestrians, earning a few honks, fingers, and incredulous looks. What was a few more to the already insane day she was having? And, clearly, stopping children from dying was higher on her priority list than thinking, because here she was, running downhill as recklessly as the kid was.

He turned sharply around the corner, completely defying physics. No time to try and make sense of things, either. She made the same sharp turn at a different road, hoping to cut him off. For the next few moments, she got to remark on just how fun sprinting on frosty sidewalk and dodging walking people in boots was.

She stepped foot in the park at the same instant that the boy was hurled into a pile of snow at the base of a statue. Warm once more from both her clothing and exertion, she hurled herself by his prone form. _He's dead, he's dead, he's so dead. Someone call 911._ But there his dazed eyes, crowing voice, and wide grin were, and she reached up to pinch the bridge of her nose, only to get slammed into by a _couch_ of all things.

This day could not get any worse.

She was dimly aware through the lancing pain in her skull and shoulder of the boy wrapped in the arms connected to the body that had just shielded him from the two-hundred pound bulk of devil-spawned chair. _Her_ body. Which kind of hurt, right now. Through the exclamations of his friends, only his voice got through to her.

"I can't breathe," he squeaked. Good thing, too, because otherwise she might have strangled him while she laid there in oblivion. She rolled off of him, groaning, and settled into the snow for the second time in the last thirty minutes.

"I lost a tooth!" he shouted to his relieved and very impressed friends as he sprang up with all the energy of a kid who had not just been hit by a piece of furniture traveling at twenty miles per hour. She didn't think she broke or dislocated anything. Her sanity, maybe, but who needed that anyways? She was going to have bruises all over. Not to mention a tiny ring of a bite mark on her leg.

"'Tis just a flesh wound," she said aloud to herself, and she knew she was alright. Quoting _Monty Python and the Holy Grail _was a straight give-away. She closed her eyes.

And freaked the shit out.

She stared with wide-eyes at her surroundings, lunging upwards. The kids turned their attention towards her, and the brown-eyed boy asked her if she was okay. No. No, she was _not_ okay. Not at all.

The movie. The one that had came out last year, the one with what's-his-face. Who had made it? And it's name? As the opening of the movie came back to her, so to did whatever had happened to her and was happening right now suddenly make sense. The blow to her head had made her remember _that_ much, but she could only remember it's storyline and ending and characters dimly. She did remember one thing in particular, though. She sharply turned around, ignoring the pounding in her head and in her pulse.

And gazed into the mischievous, ice blue eyes of Jack Frost himself.


	2. Hey, Look! A Bonding Moment

Silver and indigo glinted in the gyrating mass of dark sand. Light seemed to be sucked towards it: the candles, the air, the giant globe in the center of the room itself trembled.

The boogeyman was back.

Accompanied by the faintest of laughter, the most tantalizing hints of shadow, North roared for his snow globe. _Bring me the yetis! Bring me the globe! Bring me the guardians! _From a disheveled elf who looked shaken and beaten the globe was relinquished. From the corners of his workshop his most loyal toy-makers were gathered, and from the portal spawned of the snow globe entrusted in their possession he hoped to find the other guardians. Sandman, Tooth, and Bunnymund. He wished it was only for a social visit, but North knew in his great heart that they would need all they could muster and more if the children of the world stood a chance.

So did North see their lights of faith and hope flicker momentarily, and so did he witness again the arrival of a great evil that once more desired to plague their happiness and joy.

So did Pitch arise.

* * *

The smirk in both his dancing eyes and on his grinning face was slowly replaced by confusion from his confident position leaning against the statue. The blizzard of midwinter in said eyes locked gazes with her own green ones, widening with disbelief and awe. _Shit, shit, shit. Rule number one of crazy universe hopping; don't mess with anything important. _She might have to rely on trusty Wikipedia to remind her what exactly was going to happen, but everyone knew that fucking up time-lines or events resulted in bad things. Bad things, like not being born or coming back to a Nazi society. Like not being able to brush your teeth anymore because you messed up the invention of pie or something like that.

Bad things like Jack Frost realizing that you could see him.

Look away, _now_. Stand up. Talk to the children. _Act normal, _for God's sake. She turned around and smiled a shaky smile at best, reassuring them she was alright. With a good-humored cheer she suddenly didn't feel anymore, she accepted their offer to play (Sweet, getting almost killed made her one of the cool kids now!) and let the brown-eyed boy pull her headlong into a snowball fight. Her distraction quickly made her one of the easier targets, and she resisted the urge to look back as she was pummeled with snowballs. She almost started to believe that she had put on a good enough charade to convince him that he was just seeing things when she backed up into six feet of icy teenager.

And there went _that_, because pretending that you hadn't just stared at him like a creeper was all well and good, but when you corporeally slammed into someone who could only physically touch a believer it was kind of a dead give-away. She face-palmed just in time to block a particularly accurate snow ball to the face.

"You can see me," he breathed from behind her, his voice literally sending chills up her spine. What was she supposed to do?

"Uh, no. No I can't," she finally said, moving away from him. The hand unoccupied by his staff latched on to her arm, and both steel and laughter crept into his incredulous voice once more.

"You can," and this he said like a decree, like a unchangeable fact of nature. She tried to wriggle her arm out of his persistent grasp, not helping the idiot impression at all as she stood there getting pelted by snowballs.

"I'm taking a time-out!" she yelled to the kids. "Uh, arm cramp!" Her so-called arm cramp then proceeded to spin her about to face him as he gazed into her eyes.

"You believe in me? You _believe_ in me!" He let go of her arm and lifted of the ground, his voice ecstatic as he spun in fancy aerial motions that made her just slightly jealous of his ability to fly.

"Believe in who? A barefoot boy in a blue hoodie?" Her voice put a stop to his revelry, and he hovered once more before her to narrow his eyes at her.

"You believe in Jack Frost. In me." He said in a matter-of-fact tone of voice.

"Right, well, nice to meet you, Mr. Frost. If you don't mind, I'll be off now." She had to get away, now. Her jaunty two-fingered salute was stopped mid-air by his hand fastening to her wrist. She felt his magic permeate through her sleeve, raising goose bumps, and when she looked down her boots were fused to the snow with a thick casing of ice.

"Oh, that's just evil," she complained. Glancing back at the children, it seemed that they were too thoroughly absorbed in their warfare to pay attention to both her predicament and her what would no doubt look like idiocy.

Wonderful. _Don't mind me and my potential screwing over everything that's supposed to happen! I'm just talking to myself and trapped in ice. Just peachy!_

"Who are you?" he asked. In a manner she had learned from the little red lizard dragon dude from _Mulan _(which she could ironically remember in the place of the movie she found herself trapped in right now), she returned the question, this time adding a snap of her fingers for saucy flare. "Who are _you_?" He just raised an eyebrow, and she sighed.

"Jack Frost, I know." He looked at her expectantly, and she held out her hand that he wasn't gripping. "Seraphina. I go by Sera." He switched his gaze from her face to her hand, and she flexed her fingers slightly. Removing his grip from her wrist, he shook her other hand with yet another raised eyebrow. Even through her gloves, she felt her fingers go numb.

"Sera," he said, his serious, musing look lasting only a second. A grin split his face, showing off perfect snow-white teeth that she was definitely jealous of. "I didn't ask what your name was, though. I asked who _are_ you? How... _why_ do you believe? Where are you from? I've never seen you around here, and I'd think I'd notice."

"Yes, poke fun at my conspicuously lunatic self." She started off with the easiest of his questions with a sigh, raising a hand to stop him as he opened his mouth. "I don't think that I'll be getting any peace any time soon," she said more to herself than him, "so I'll cave. Look, do you want to, uh, I don't know, maybe unfreeze my feet, get coffee, and go somewhere I don't look like any more of an idiot for talking to myself? Seeing as that's what rad conversationalists do," she added.

He looked at her with those impish eyes of his, and she suddenly got a bad feeling. "Nonononono, you are _not _pulling a Peter Pan—"

He promptly grasped her by the arm once more and lifted her off of the ground. Her shoulder screamed in protest where her voice was lost in the sudden rush of frigid wind whipping against her face. Their flight was mercifully short enough, and she sank to the roof top in relief, massaging her shoulder and wringing her arm out. Her sputtering of undignified "Ow"s and half finished curses came to a stop, and she pulled the windblown strands of hair out of her face so she could glare at him properly.

"The least you could do is feel the tiniest bit of guilt for possibly giving me a concussion and a dislocated arm." He just shrugged, coming to sit across from her on the edge of the rooftop with an innocent expression. With another sigh, she massaged her forehead. "I really need to Google the synopsis," she muttered to herself. She opened her eyes to see him looking at her with a fascinated expression. "Alright, alright. I found an elf and he bit me and now I'm here without my laptop or coffee or mental health." He mimicked her gesture and held up a hand to pause her.

"Wait, _what_?"

"I found an elf and he bit me and now—"

"You know what I mean." He rolled his eyes at her, which she was also insanely jealous of. Why couldn't she fly, have perfectly white teeth, gorgeous eyes, and stellar looks? Life was so unfair.

"Did you really miss my dramatic entrance into your igloo? Seriously, I should get some appreciation for face-planting through a swirly portal into a pile of snow."

"Come on, Sera. _I_ should get some appreciation for taking you seriously. What did the elf look like?"

"Really? So you can fly around and freeze people's faces off, but when I teleport via a snow globe I'm the weird one? That hurts, _Jack_. Hurts right here, deep in my heart." She theatrically held a hand to her chest, to which he shook his head at and chuckled.

"I wouldn't freeze their faces off, and I do owe you credit for believing in me." His gaze softened slightly, though by his expression she knew he would come back to as to why that was despite whatever avoidance she could pull off. "You said a snow globe? I'd guess North."

"You'd guess? What, you and... Santa... aren't best buds?" He shook his head.

"Nope. I'm not exactly on his happy list, and I could never get past security, either. Those yetis sure are something." Jack shrugged. "I can fly you home, or we can borrow his snow globe again." He said this reluctantly, unwilling to part with his first believer so soon. Even as he thought this, his fingers twitched in their desire to have human contact. He was selfish, he could admit that. He had been alone for three-hundred years, and he wasn't about to be alone for another three hundred.

"Not right away," she said slowly, for different but similar reasons. The thought of what would happen if she for some reason _stayed _crept it's sneaky way into her mind. Not only did she doubt that Jack could fly her whatever universe she had lived in, what did she have at "home" that was worth giving up this magic, this adventure for? Her laptop was probably stolen by now, which she would definitely sob and scream over as soon she had a moment alone, her car towed, her self eventually assumed dead, missing, or kidnapped, and her college soon to be fucked over. Sure, it made absolutely no fucking sense, and sure, she might be going insane, but it sure as hell beat whatever real life had to offer her. She'd take this and a sticker that labeled her as "Demented" any day. She looked at him, and he looked at her, and they both saw unanimous—if unvoiced and misunderstood—agreement in each others' eyes.

"So, back to your questions," she said, summoning a light tone of voice. "Sera: eighteen year old college freshman, wicked with a pencil, legendary procrastinator, soft spot for classical, and all around awesome. Yourself?"

"Maybe we should send you home," he mused. "You're going to steal my reigning bad-jokester crown."

"Hey, I'll be the lame queen to your lame king! We can terrorize the world." She waved him to continue before he read too much into said lame joke, and he did so with yet another raised eyebrow.

"I don't think I'm supposed to tell you, but to hell with that, right? So the first thing I remember is the moon, and the man in it." As he went on to describe his beginning and the following three-hundred years, an echo of the prologue came back to her head, and _God _she needed to read that up on her phone as soon as she got a free moment. The sky gradually darkened as he went on, with her interrupting with the occasional question or exclamation.

"And finally, here I am, which leads me to ask why. Why do you believe in Jack Frost where others don't?" He leaned forward, discomfiting her with his intense expression. And here it was, the root of it all. What was she supposed to say?

"Beeeeecause you're fantastically amazing?" she drawled, mentally cringing.

"Ah, flattery. That's kind of you to say so," he said, waiting patiently.

"Because my parents taught me to?" Slightly better than the first answer, at least.

"Uh-huh." Damn. She was sure that would have bought her some time.

"Because... Oh, hey! Look! A distraction!" She pointed somewhere random behind him, and he laughed.

"You're great. Seriously, though—" he suddenly stopped, swiveling around and shifting to a crouch as he gazed at the direction she had pointed in.

"Frosty?" When he didn't respond, she grumbled at the effort and stood up. Coming beside him, she peered at the direction he was looking in. "You know that I was kidding, right?"

"Shh."

"Are you shushing me? Oh, woe is me! Do you hear that little cracking noise? That's the sound of my heart—" He gave her an exasperated glance, his hand shooting up and clamping her own which sent little trails of frost up her glove and sleeve. She effectively shut up as he lifted off the roof again, hovering low to the ground and letting go of her hand. She landed with silent feet, this time able to be the one raising her eyebrow that the other. He jerked his head towards a dark alleyway before heading his jolly way down it, and she gave the mental equivalent of what was quickly becoming an overused sigh. Still, a living weapon of snowflakes and ice-cream was probably good company for trekking through abandoned alleyways, so she followed him.

Then she saw whatever he was stalking as a definitely Australian "Hello, mate," drifted over from behind them.

She flinched as Jack saw the figure at the same moment, pointing his staff menacingly at the silhouette leaning against the wall watching them. A giant, humanoid rabbit walking on twos instead of fours and wielding a boomerang stepped out of the shadows, and she relaxed slightly, her other eyebrow joining it's twin in the expression of incredulity on her face. The Easter Bunny, only he didn't look as friendly and harmless as she had imagined.

"Bunnymund!" Jack grinned, propping his weight against his staff. "What are you doing around here? Isn't Easter next week?"

"Been a long time, Frost." The rabbit cocked his boomerang towards them as he walked closer. "Blizzard of '68, I believe. Easter Sunday, wasn't it?"

"You're not still mad about that, are ya?"

"Yes," he ground out, "but let's not argue in front of the... child." She fumed when she realized that she was the one being referred to as a child. Sera opened her mouth to exchange verbal insults with him, but he had already turned his attention from her. "Besides, this is about something else. Fellas?" Jack had but a moment to frown before out of nowhere (seriously, where did they hide?!) a yeti slapped him forcefully on the back. It was almost laughable at how easily his skinny form was shoved into a large bag with barely anything but an "Oof!"; that is, until she was shoved as well by another yeti.

Not into the bag. Away.

She stumbled and fell, almost instantly pushing herself up. Already the yetis had thrown a glowing snowball against the ground, a familiar portal rising from the melting shards of ice. An icy fist punching out of the bag was the last sight she saw of Jack before he was tossed into the portal, the yetis following close behind. The rabbit moved to enter the rapidly fading swirl of distorted air, turning to face her with a last laugh, so to speak.

"Should've brought Sandy. You didn't see any of this, kiddo." With a fizzle, he was gone, and she was left alone in the alleyway with no evidence of the past ten seconds save a brief breeze of frosty air. And then even that was gone.

There was only silence.

"_Son of a bitch!"_


	3. Dreams of Two Different Kinds

Jack stared them down as the crack of ancient wood against polished stone rung like the tolling of a deep bell, trails of frost and gusts of wind accompanying the echoes that faded into the depths of North's workshop. The music died out, the confetti dropped to the floor. Reactions to his little display of power ranged from their amusement and winces to the elves' fear and disappointment, buying him the silence that he desperately needed to sort out his jumbled thoughts and emotions.

Only since this very afternoon had he first seen the girl, Sera—she with the complexion flushed with cold, eyes of chartreuse, hair of wild mahogany and appearance disheveled by her eventful day, and it had been even less than that since he had realized that she could see him. Believed in him, even. It had taken all of his willpower to act normal in her presence in the place of sheer, paralyzing disbelief and all-consuming wonder, and as if _that_ wasn't shocking enough, now there was this.

"You want me to join you guys." He raised an indulgent eyebrow at them, pulling his staff off of the ground and hefting it up to rest on his shoulder. He let none of his stunned amazement show, instead opting to regard them with a cocky posture. "The big four, all together: Santa Claus, Tooth Fairy, Sandman, and the Easter Kangaroo—"

"The what?!" Bunnymund's indifferent gaze immediately sharpened, stabbing holes into his own. His arms unfolded, and he shifted a menacing inch closer.

"You heard me. Maybe you should chill out, Roo. Eye-flames and ear-steam are never good signs. Stress is a killer, you know?" He tipped the butt of his staff towards the rabbit, and icicles suddenly hung from the tip of his long fluffy ears. In an instant they were face to face, with Bunnymund bending down from his intimidating height to glower threateningly at him.

"I'm a bunny." The words came through gritted teeth, and Jack rewarded his menace with a lazy grin.

"Calm down there, old guy. You're not that young any more, after all. Don't want to push the brain aneurisms or heart attacks after the first couple thousand years, am I right?" Bunnymund snarled at him, his breaths coming in rapid huffs. His fur bristled, his long ears still sporting fashionable icicles flat against his skull.

"Boys! Now's not the time for your self-absorbed arguments! And you wonder why he avoids us," Tooth said in aside to North. Her reprimand only barely restrained them from breaking for each others' necks right then and there; even then, Bunnymund still loomed over Jack, whose eyes were narrowed and whose smirk displayed his confidence for all to see.

"And what are you supposed to be? Frosty the Snow Runt? An arrogant adolescent who would just as likely freeze someone's nose off than he is to run around with his head stuffed with snow? A disloyal brat who would probably scare kids more than entertain them?" Jack's grin faded, and his taunting words turned to defensive ones. He raised his voice, speaking over Bunnymund.

"What do you know about entertaining kids? All you do is fatten them up with candy. I've never heard of you even letting them so much as see you, much less actually physically _play_ with them—"

"A good-for-nothing joke who fancies himself—"

"And seriously, what are _you_ supposed to be? Why carry around the stupid boomerang and primitive gear if you're going to whack people on the head like a caveman and not even—"

"—as some sort of holiday figure, some sort of almighty winter spirit who's superior to everyone else—"

"I _am _a figure, a winter 'spirit'! I—"

"—with _no_ friends, _no_ family, and _no believers?!"_

And if Jack's staff had slammed into the floor with the power of thunder, then the rabbit's words fell like the blade of a guillotine, like a bullet to the head. They tore at a deep, festering wound that he had only recently been reminded of by Sera's realization of his existence, punching shards of bone and scar tissue deeper inside until they pierced his heart. His lips narrowed into a thin line, and he launched himself at the rabbit only to be obscured by frantic wings reminiscent of a hummingbird.

"Calm yourself, you wriggly rodent!" North's booming voice said from beyond Tooth's extended hands that clasped the arm in possession of his staff. Her magenta eyes pleaded him to not punt Bunnymund's head to the man whose sick humor had called him forth to be a guardian after three hundred years of silence in the first place. He yanked his arm from her grip and moved past her, only to be hit in the back of the head by a softly sparkling ball that dissipated into his silvery-white hair. He blinked in surprise, his anger suddenly gone in the thick haze of dreams, turning around to gaze at the short, football-shaped puff of golden sand, and as he slowly collapsed to his knees the Sandman succeeded where the Tooth Fairy hadn't.

His wide, gentle smile, round golden eyes, and drifting ribbons of sand were the last thing he was aware of.

* * *

"Siri, you stupid idiot, search 'Rise of the Guardians'." Sera tapped her thumb impatiently on the screen of her phone, waiting for it to respond.

"...Would you like me to search 'rose of the gardeners'?"

"_No!_ I want you to make me a sandwich, you piece of..." She sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. Manual search hadn't yielded anything favorable, either. She was left with the harsh conclusion that there was no such movie in this world, and that she would just have to hold her brain hostage until it would remember the plot. She leaned back in the small bed of the guest bedroom, turning off her phone and plugging into her borrowed charger. Gazing up at the unadorned ceiling, she tried to remember something more than just a bunch of holiday characters defeating the boogeyman, but she couldn't. All she had to go on was the bare bones, no more.

This was going to be great.

A knock on the door. "Sera? Are you alright? I heard shouting." She winced.

"Sorry, Mrs. Bennett! I, uh... saw a spider." Laughter drifted from under the door, and the light creeping through that space turned off once more.

"Try to get some sleep, dear," Mrs. Bennett said, her voice trailing off as she moved back downstairs. She buried her next sigh into her pillow, holding her breath and relishing the soft fluffiness against her face. When she had found them again examining her boots frozen to the ground in the park, Jamie had been rather insistent that she stay the night, and his mother certainly hadn't objected when he had exaggerated that she had saved him from death by couch. All she had to do was fake trauma and utter some unintelligible lie about how she had fallen asleep on the bus, missed her stop, and woken up in the middle of nowhere, and she suddenly had a place to stay for the night. She would be eternally grateful and just a tad bit guilty for their kindness.

She rolled over and glanced at her digital watch that never left her wrist, pressing its glow button so that she could see what time it was. Almost eleven. Not _horribly _bad, but she was tired, and playing with Jamie and Sophie before bed time had only added to her exhaustion. On top of having a day that would rattle the most stoic of disbelievers, her stress over not knowing what had happened to Jack and what was supposed to happen in the movie and what was going to happen to this small town or to her and what the hell she should even do had her smacking said pillow over her face. Her headache flared in protest, and she sighed. She'd have to wing it and somehow not screw over everything at the same time.

Perfect.

Her breathing slowed as she shoved her depressing thoughts away and locked them in the closet of rejection hidden deep in the corners of her mind. _Do your stuff, Sandman. _At least she had a guaranteed peaceful sleep when he actually existed.

Someone moaned her name.

She shot up, hurling her pillow at the source of the moan. It wasn't a sexy moan, either, much to her disappointment, but a sickly, drawn out moan from the pit of her intruder's belly. She peered over with eyes somewhat adjusted to the darkness and made out a faint silhouette across the room. Turning on the lamp on the table next to the bed, she squinted at the sudden bright flood, looking once more at the figure.

"Oh, _hell_ no."

Skin rotting and coming off completely in places, the zombie shambled closer, baring it's bloody, gaping maw devoid of teeth in places at her. This is what she had a baseball bat in her coat-closet for back at home (in addition to the possibility of needing to squish roaches or burglars), except this wasn't her house and there was no baseball bat in sight. She scooted away from the animated corpse against the headboard, reaching for the lamp and yanking it out of its socket. The room pitch black once more, she threw herself at the place she had last saw the zombie before her nerve failed her and blindly beat at it until it stopped moaning and trying to eat her. Chest heaving in adrenaline, she felt her way around the room and turned on the lights, immediately checking the zombie to make sure she had thoroughly made it dead again.

"Fuck you," she told the zombie, closing her eyes in relief for a moment. Only for a moment, because where there was one zombie there was bound to be fifty million others. A thought came to her as she moved to the window to see if there were more undead outside, and she turned back to the dead body in her room. "How did you know my name?"

The zombie sat up as well as the it could with its body beaten to a pulp, and somehow replied to her in perfect English with a mushed up head. It cleared its throat, politely coughing into its mangled hand. "Well, Sera, if I may call you that, I—"

That was as far as it got before she whacked it with the lamp again. She dragged it into the bathroom and locked it in, moving the bedside table in front of the door in the event that it got up again.

Alright. Priorities. Establish priorities in time of stress. She sat back on the bed, glaring at the scratching coming from the door that led to the rest of the house while she established priorities.

"Stop scratching at the door; there's a doorbell for a reason and I'm _trying_ to think here!" The scratching stopped and the other zombie outside her door meekly moaned an apology and shambled away. "Sheesh! Zombies these days," she muttered to herself, shaking her head. "Alright, priority number one. Stay alive. Priority number two, make some tea. Priority three, don't..." Sera paused, frowning. Something was wrong with her priorities. "See what you made me do, zombie?! Screwed up my list making."

She threw her hands in the air in exasperation. Well, she had only listed two so far, so it wouldn't be too bad revising her list. Tea was absolutely essential in an apocalypse: seriously, what would she do if she got thirsty? Drink water? She laughed out loud at the sheer ridiculousness of it. So that left the first priority. Staying alive wasn't important? She shrugged. _Okay, then._

"It's because you're dreaming and if you die you—"

"Shut up, Zombie! I've seen Inception, I know what I'm doing." The voice from the bathroom faded submissively. _Alright, how did _that_ one go? Wait, wasn't dying in Inception a bad thing? Wait, wait, wait. _She was dreaming. Her normal, mildly-less crazy mindset came back to her through a sluggish haze. Everything suddenly looked more ominous, more scary as she lucidly realized what was happening. Easter Bunny. Yetis. Elves. Snow globes. Sandman. Jack Frost.

The Boogeyman.

_Oh, shit._

The door burst open as a mob of zombies out of nowhere overpowered the lock on it, and she instinctively backed away towards the window. She slammed the lamp into it, shards of glass cutting into her skin as it broke. Her window was too low to the ground to kill her successfully. She turned back to the other alternative, frantically pressing her back to the jagged, gaping hole as they approached closer with hands and teeth ready to rip her flesh. There was no way in hell she was going to let _them_ kill her, and, heart pounding with the force of a truck, she leaned backwards and let herself fall out of the window.

The instant her body felt the falling sensation, she jerked upwards, back in the room again. This time, there were no zombies, no broken glass. Her pulse thrummed, and she hurled the blankets off of her overly warm body, turning the lamp on once more. For a few moments, all she did was stare blankly into the distance, willing her panicking self to calm down. It had felt real enough, only she wasn't typically frightened of zombies. Was the Boogeyman grasping at straws? She forced a quiet laugh, her normal bravado severely shaken, and the sound helped to quieten her nerves. "You'll have to do better than that," she murmured softly more to herself than to whatever creepy crawly might be lurking in the shadows.

She straightened and pulled the damp strands of hair from her sweaty neck, coiling it into a makeshift bun at her nape. There was a light dusting of dark sand scattered in her bedsheets; as soon as she took notice of them, they faded away in little individual wisps of smoke. The smell of rotting flesh once again briefly assailed her nose, and she flinched badly, but went away as soon as the smoke disappeared. Huh.

She pulled herself out of bed, her feet soft against the carpeted floor. The sound of their padding against it and the wood of the hallway leading to Sophie's room calmed her, and she smiled a much-needed smile at her frightened self. She was being silly. The Boogeyman might be real in this world, but his weapons were still only bad dreams and fear. Besides, this world had protectors against him. There was no reason to be afraid.

She willed these thoughts to permeate into Sophie's dream as she gazed at the black dust spinning around her head. "A 'night mare'. I get it! Very punny." Sera stroked her invisible beard of almighty wisdom for counseling, and when it was silent on the matter she abruptly punched the galloping horse for lack of a better idea. Her fist displaced a large puff of sand, and Sophie whimpered in her sleep. The mare paused in her circling and attacked her hand, only to be decapitated by it. The little girl uttered a plaintive cry, and when she looked down Sophie gazed at her with big, watery eyes as smoke drifted around them. She recognized that look, and mentally face-palmed.

"Nonono, don't cry! Don't cry, it's okay. Shhh, it was just a nightmare. See? You're okay!" Sophie patted her on the face as if to reassure herself that she was real. "Think of pretty things; unicorns—wait, no, not unicorns. You know, stuff little girls like! Uh, flowers! Rainbows... Sparkles... Christmas! Everyone loves Christmas, right?" Apparently, her rambling was just as soothing as lullabies, because Sophie was thankfully soon peacefully asleep again. Sera closed her eyes in exhaustion and relief for a moment before heading over to Jamie's room.

His nightmare was stronger. Bigger. Her fist barely dented it, sending ripples of a numb sensation up her arm, and she felt a pang of trepidation as the horse huffed evilly and bit her hand. The pain passed through the numbness, and she winced.

"Ouch! Mother fucking..." She immediately pulled her hand away, wringing it out and backing away. The horse stalked territorially over Jamie's head, and if horses could glare, that was what it was doing right now. Its teeth snapped at her as she approached once more, and she retreated once again, scowling at it.

She had an idea.

She went for the eyes, stabbing two fingers into its face and pulling her hand away equally as fast. Its glowing eyes snuffed out, the horse could no longer see and paced nervously. She grinned.

Her hand attacked it once more, using the black sand as a canvas. Hooves became paws, then stubs, then nonexistent as she slowly displaced the sand with her fingers. She erased its teeth—not without a few more bites in the process—and with an effort completely broke off its legs. _Jamie must be having a really weird dream_, she mused as she continued with her work. The horse became a deformed dog, then a walrus thing, then a worm. Eventually, she had spread the sand in a cloud far enough that the sand started to fall onto Jamie. She noticed that they were kind of like magnets in a sense, and when the last bit of the horse was gone, she sighed in relief. Whatever the guardians did, it certainly was less tedious than this. Her hand still felt numb, and she glanced at it in worry. When she looked back, Jamie's brown eyes were open in both fright and amazement as the sand evaporated.

"Thank you," he whispered, and wrapped his arms around her.

* * *

Wonder of wonders.

Pitch regarded the girl through slitted eyes. She was the disturbance, the one who had unraveled his masterpieces. He had put her in a nightmare, too, but she had broken out. Her mind had been difficult to read, to invade, to plant sweet whisperings in and to dominate, and in the end his nightmare hadn't been strong enough.

She was too weak, too fragile, too warm, too human and too _annoying _to be a Guardian. What she had done wasn't much, but it was something.

And she could see him.

Only if he let her, of course, but he knew that she knew that he was real. Her sarcastic comments both voiced and unvoiced had revealed that much. Her mind was an odd place, difficult to traverse, unlike any child he had assailed before, and while he could crush her in an instant, Pitch didn't go up against any enemy that he didn't know well. He studied from the darkness, plotted, worked over and over every possibility of failure before he attacked. That was how he did things. That was why it had taken him thousands of years to come back. But he was ready this time, and he would be ready for whatever surprise they had at him, be it this girl or their silly fop of a new guardian.

He would watch, first. Observe this girl. Make sure she was no threat.

And then he would kill her.

Oh, yes, he would drive her insane first for destroying his beauties. Corrupt her until she didn't know her first name. For daring to plant the smallest seeds of hope in these two children, he would murder her. Painlessly, though. She was only a human, after all. Insignificant. Unworthy of his attention. She did not deserve his time, his effort, his level of skill, and he faded into the shadows once more. After all, he a had an appointment to keep with the lovely Toothiana, and Pitch was not one to disappoint.

But he would watch. Carefully. Inconspicuously. Without risk of discovery. Where he could, he would keep an eye on this little surprise of a girl. It was only so long until she slipped, and then he would have her mind to toy with. A treat to play with in his free time.

To anyone who cared to look, his smile was the last thing visible before he melted into the night.


	4. Ignore Me at Your Own Peril

The sound of jingling bells and feet pattering on the front of his hoodie stirred him from his dreams of illusive phantoms of tantalizing evanescence. Blinking slowly, the first thing he saw was a silver, beaten up trumpet shoved in his face. A blast of strangled noise blew the snowy hair back from his face, and he squinted as he reached for the elf, lifting him off of his chest.

"No music," he growled at the elf, and was promptly hit in the nose by said trumpet as the elf threw it at his face in a rage. He sank his teeth into his lower lip, biting off a string of expletives as he reached for his staff to freeze the annoying thing. His hand found nothing, and he forgot the elf's offense for the moment while he sat up to search frantically for it. The elf took the opportunity to chew a U-shaped wound into the meaty part between his thumb and index finger, and this time he _did_ let the string of expletives loose.

"Ffffff—"

"Jack!" North bellowed in his overly-loud and jolly voice as he entered the room. "I see you're awake. Come, come, we've no time to lose." He took one look at the elf hanging from his hand and waved his hand in dismissal, bustling over to the mammoth-sized wardrobe adjacent to the alcove he had been sleeping in.

"North," Jack said, his voice strained. He shook the elf off his hand onto the floor as North pulled out a coat and wrapped it about himself. The burly giant hummed a tune under his breath as he further dressed himself in a haphazard manner, pulling on gloves, hats, et cetera. Jack watched in incredulity, his stress levels only increasing the longer he didn't have the smooth, chilled wood of the staff in his calloused hand.

"...Uh, North—"

"He's making a list," he suddenly sang, "and checking it twice! He's going to find out who's naughty or nice! Santa Claus is—"

"North!" he man's bushy grey eyebrows drew together in a frown, obscuring eyes of bright blue as he turned around to finally face Jack. "What? What?!" He placed his meaty fists on his hips. "There's no need to shout so loud, m'boy! I'm standing five feet away from you." Jack just stared at him, his eyes both exasperated and agitated from behind the injured hand he was using to face-palm.

"Where is my—"

North suddenly spoke in incomprehensible Russian, the end of his exclamation transitioning back to English. "...happened to your hand?!" Jack pulled the offending hand back to his side, sighing.

"This fella," he said, pointing at the elf on the floor who was currently trying to whack his foot with his abused trumpet without much success, "but that's not important. I need to know where—"

"What did you do to your face?!" Jack blinked, grasping his cut nose and getting more blood on it in the process.

"I... It's fine, seriously. I just _need_ to know where my—" North grasped the elf near his foot, raising him to eye-level and chastising him in half Russian, half English. "You are... very bad... hippopotamus! Don't... him... or... bacon! I'm serious, you squirming—"

"_North!" _Jack's voice rang out across the room, vibrating the slender ice sculptures on North's work table. _"Where is my staff?!"_

Silence.

"Oh," he said after a moment, depositing the elf back on the floor. "Why didn't you just ask in the first place? We're very pressed for time, you know; no time for your foolish dilly-dallying. Tooth said something bad is going on at her palace, and we were waiting for you to wake up before we left to go see what was going on." North waddled over to a tool box shoved into the corner of the room and scrutinized its contents before hurling most of it over his shoulder. Jack dodged a chisel that imbedded itself into the wall behind him, crouching low and raising wary arms to protect his face. More ice-carving tools were hurled in his direction, and he narrowly avoided getting speared in the head. "Ah hah!" North pulled out his staff and raised it above his head momentarily like a prize before he tossed it to Jack.

He caught it with dexterous hands, holding it close as he let out a frosty sigh of relief. Behind eyes heavily lidded with the comfort his reunion with his other half of his powers caused, his furious irritation dissipated into snowy tranquility. He inhaled and exhaled plumes of icy fog, letting the cold calm him, only to suddenly be snatched by a beefy hand and indignantly hefted onto North's meaty shoulder.

"Come along, boy, you take much too long. I'll fill you in on what you missed on your way there. Horatio!" he called to a yeti standing guard outside his door. "Is my sleigh ready?" The yeti grunted in what he assumed was confirmation, and Santa sauntered forth into the toy-making chaos that was his workshop. "Anyhow, where were we before you and Bunnymund decided to verbally slap-fight? Ah, yes: the Man in the Moon has chosen you to be a guardian. There's no avoiding it, Jack."

"Woah, woah, woah. Hold on," he said before he could get any farther. He lifted off of his shoulder, coming to a landing in front of North. Resting the butt of his staff on the floor, he leaned his weight against it and raised an eyebrow. "What makes you think that I'm cut out to be a guardian, not even considering whether or not I want to be one? You guys are all serious business. Me? I'm fun times and snow-days. Besides, it's not like I can 'help the children' or whatever when not a single one of them believes in me."

Before today, that was.

North fixed him with a look before striding briskly past him. "Look inside your heart, Jack. You've spent your entire life as an immortal doing what? Looking for who you are, where you belong? What your purpose is? This is your chance," he said seriously. Jack followed in silence; his words were uncannily deep. "This is your chance to be something. Your chance to show that there's more to you than superficial amusement. Your chance to surprise the world that you _are _a young man, yes, but one with barely tapped potential, one that is _worthy_ of the name Jack Frost and _worthy_ of the adoration of the children he protects willingly or not. Prove to me, to _us_ who you are. _This is your decision. _Choose, but choose quickly. We leave now."

He pushed open large, twin doors leading to a stone staircase that spiraled down into oblivion and descended its steps. They in turn led to great tunnels of ice, and from one of the bigger tunnels emerged savage reindeer hitched to an insanely industrialized sleigh. Sandman, Bunnymund, Tooth—who was looking particularly nervous and edgy, and several yetis were waiting for them. North strode over to them amiably, clapping a hand on Bunnymund's shoulder. "Coming, Jack?" he said good-naturedly. Jack paused, tearing his gaze from the sleigh and glancing at each of them. He sighed, rolling his eyes and sauntering past them.

"Fine. _One_ ride, that's it."

He stepped into the sleigh.

The next few minutes were a much-needed breath of relief. He felt the arctic wind whip against his face, pulling against his clothes and hair and watering his eyes. North's booming laughter accompanied the trail of golden sand left in their wake, and even Tooth's troubled expression was lightened with a joyous smile. All of them had experienced flight before, and had learned to love it as a part of themselves. All spirits lifted, all woes were put aside for the moment.

Except for Bunnymund.

He felt the slightest hint of pity for his green face and his despondent form huddled in the deepest corner of the sleigh, regarding his quivering body with an amused grin. "Cheer up, Roo," he said as the swirls of the portal vanished behind them. "Fantastic view. Why don't you come up and take a look?" And for all his humor, he wasn't joking. The stained glass glittering like rainbows, the elegant spires and arching towers, the exquisitely artful platforms and the sun-gold paving only added to the sheer natural beauty of the secluded cove they found themselves in.

"Suit yourself," he said in response to the rabbit's weak growl. He leaned indolently against the railing of the sleigh, following his own advice and taking in the view with impressed eyes. It had been a long time since he had taken a vacation, so to speak, from his days of fun and no rules or responsibility, and North was right. It was time he did something worthwhile. Besides, beautiful scenery was certainly an added perk. He gazed around as the sleigh glided through the air, seeing nothing but ocean surrounding the island for miles on end, and as he looked back at Tooth's palace, his gaze sharpened. He leaned forward, his eyes intent, and saw them at the same time everyone else did.

Horses, horses of black cutting a swathe of dark night through the air like a scythe, like a plague. Ribbons of liquid onyx tracked the progress of these horses as they hunted down the tiny fairies that swarmed towards them in search of salvation from being eaten alive, and Tooth lunged out of the sleigh towards them. North lashed the reindeer with the reins, and they shot after her. Still, they were too slow. Anything but the speed of light would have been too slow as fairies were being captured at a rate of a hundred per second.

He knew someone faster, though.

Jack launched off the sleigh, surpassing Tooth's frantic fluttering as he flew forward. Already, in the span of a few seconds, the air was empty of the hummingbird-like fairies. His eyes strained to find any, and his gaze caught on the one horse that was still active as the rest homed in on a platform. The last horse reached out with fanged teeth to snatch the fairy out of the air. His staff sent the horse reeling towards the others conglomerating on the terrace, and he grasped the fairy with his free hand away from it. The horse fled, and he exhaled in relief, gazing at the fairy curled in the palm of his hand. She shivered, looking up at him with fearful eyes, and he soothed her with his gaze where he lacked the time to sooth her with words. Landing on a nearby platform, he raised his hood and slipped the fairy into the crook of his neck, where she took refuge cloaked by the hood at his nape.

"_You monster!"_

Jack looked up at the scream, half-expecting it at this point to be addressed at him. It wasn't actually, but instead aimed at the amalgamation of all things that crawled throughout the night. Where once galloped horses with bellies full of terrified sprites stood a man cloaked in darkness, looming tall over the enraged form of Tooth. His eyes were full of golden menace, his lips of amused fangs. She swung her fist blindly at him, her magenta eyes furious, but the moment before she made contact he vanished. Laughter rung out from the rooftop above her, and all eyes turned towards him.

"_This _is the best your precious Man in the Moon has to offer? A rodent, a codger, a football, and a helpless little fairy? Color me disappointed," he said, fading away as North landed his sleigh and slashed at him with his scimitars. He patted Bunnymund on the head, who was still reeling in North's sleigh, and disappeared once more at the drunken swing of a boomerang. Black sand puffed Sandman in the face, who scrunched up his nose and sneeze. And then there the man was, right before him.

With his back to him.

Jack stared at him, waiting for him to address him. Instead, he began to go on a melodramatic speech about how much injustice he suffered and how he was so evil and blah blah blah. For the billionth time in his life, Jack was ignored.

"Pitch, I assume," he said aloud. The man paused his speech and turned around, raising his eyebrows at him.

"What a pleasant surprise! _You're_ the new—"

Jack punched him in the face.

He hurtled off the edge of the platform, limbs flailing. A loud splash echoed from below, cutting off his shouting, and Jack shook out his hand as ice receded from his knuckles.

"Asshole," he muttered. He lifted off of the platform only to be stopped by the sudden appearance of Pitch's soaked form.

"That wasn't very nice," he chided. His voice was still well-groomed; the only sign of his irritation was his slitted eyes. "Still, it is a pleasure to meet you. I _so _look forward to—"

Ice crackled as he swung his staff low. For a moment, he made contact with the black of his robe before Pitch vanished once more.

"How rude," he said from his position on the roof above Jack. This time both voice and expression showed his annoyance. "Fighting with blunt force? Where is the intrigue? The deceit? The espionage, the feints, the cleverness, the manipulation? I crave a worthy audience for my reign, not blundering peasants who can't appreciate the fine arts."

"Too bad for you, then," Jack called upwards, crouching slightly and gripping his staff in both hands. Pitch sighed loud enough that he could hear it from where he was.

"Fine, then. Have it your way, little Jack Frost. Let us dispose of fine words and charades." He slowly faced, gesturing with his hands. "Even if your little ragtag band of misfits somehow manages to uncurl from fetal position, I—" He abruptly cut off to dodge a boomerang, which curled back to Bunnymund, who strode forward past Jack to gaze upwards at Pitch.

"Glad to see you, ah, 'uncurled from fetal position'," Jack said to Bunnymund's back.

"I couldn't trust your thick-headed, stuck-up incompetence to handle the Boogeyman on your own," he replied, equally as tauntingly humorous.

"Don't worry, I'll protect you and all the damsels—children, I mean, in distress while looking amazingly good at the same time." Above, Pitch howled his outrage as North landed his sleigh once more and approached with scimitars drawn.

"You keep on talking and looking handsome, I'll do the protecting," the Easter Bunny called as he began to scale the tower in leaping bounds. Jack rolled his eyes, eying his slow progress where he himself could have just flown up.

"Silence! You will all stay silent!" Pitch snarled as he was cornered by them. _"You will all appreciate—"_

A ball of softly glowing sand smacked him right in the fist-inflicted bruise rapidly darkening on his sickly grey face, and Pitch stopped talking. His eyes, narrowed in anger, closed completely, and he toppled off of the roof. Jack neatly stepped out of the way as he hit the spot where he had just been standing with a loud thud before rolling off once more into the ocean below. He didn't come back out.

"Nice one, Sandy," Jack said as he floated up next to the group.

"Not too shabby, yourself. Must be hard coming up with all those flippant remarks while looking good at the same time." Bunnymund cocked an eyebrow at him.

"What can I say? I'm a born multitasker."

"Know what else you are? A born—"

Sandman abruptly strode in between them, fixing each of them with a reprimanding glare. Sand in the form of a pointing finger coalesced above his head, and they looked in the direction he wanted to bring their attention to.

"What will we do?" Tooth was saying to North, frantic. Feathers detached from her, and she stood woozily on the ground, her wings suddenly unable to support her weight. North was kneeling before her, steadying her with a hand. She looked over at them as her magenta eyes filled with tears, answering the question in Jack's eyes. "Their faith," she said softly. "Even as we speak, children are waking up still in possession of their lost teeth. So as the light of hope and childhood fades from their eyes, so too do I fade." Her voice quavered, and she let North envelop her in a giant hug. "They took my fairies, my coins, my teeth. Already, few believe in me now."

_Join the club._

"Teeth?" Jack said, if only to distract her from her woes.

"Teeth," she confirmed, her voice muffled in North's shoulder. Bunnymund came over to pat her back, and Sandman shared a look with Jack. "Teeth are the keepers of memories. Every tooth, every—"

"Memories?" His gaze suddenly sharpened.

"Memories. Whenever a child needs to look upon something with nostalgia, we simply remind them of it."

"I don't have memories," he said slowly. "Didn't, before I... came into being." They all looked at him, Tooth raising her head. "Could you..." He trailed off.

"I could have, before Pitch stole all the teeth." And here a trace of her anger came back, lacing itself into her voice, giving her strength were belief in her did not. "Now, there's nothing. Now, every child who loses a tooth will never have that gift of memories again."

"_Wait." _North's voice attracted their attention as he paused, fingers at his forehead. His expression lit up, and Sandy conjured a light bulb above his head for added effect. "_We_ will collect the teeth!"

"Is it possible?" Tooth asked, perking up. "The five of us? Do what thousands of fairies did twenty-four seven?"

"Ahhhh, but you forget who we are!" North grinned. "We are Guardians, and each of us has more power than thousands of fairies combined. Do you know how many presents I deliver in one night?

"And how many eggs I deliver in a day? It may be impossible, but it's a cause. It's _hope," _Bunnymund said.

"And we could get your teeth back, Jack!" Tooth pulled out of North's hug, her excitement giving her life once more. "We could go across the world right now. We could gather the teeth!" She laughed joyously, and grasped Sandman—the only person shorter than her—in a spinning hug that scattered sneeze-inducing sand everywhere.

"Off we go, then!" North strode briskly over to his sleigh, soothing the reindeer. Jack lifted into the sleigh, so distracted that he didn't even notice the fairy buried against his neck climb out of his hood and flutter over to enthusiastically greet Tooth.

His memories. He could get his memories back.


	5. I Think I Liked Sandman Better

Two a.m., and someone was in the room. Again. Son of a bitch.

Sera reluctantly gazed up at the ceiling with weary eyes, her extremely pissed off glare slowly drifting down to gaze at yet another silhouette. Sleep. She needed it. And she was going to fuck over whoever had interrupted her desperately needed sleep with Jamie's conveniently placed baseball bat in his room like a mother-of-god enraged grizzly bear interrupted from hibernation. Good thing the kid played sports.

She rolled off the bed and grasped his bat, Jamie's arms slipping from her neck as she did so. Despite being so scared of nightmares, the little kid was a surprisingly heavy sleeper once he had his hands on a human-sized teddy-bear to hug. She was severely jealous as she approached the figure.

"Damn it, again? I thought I taught you your lesson already, weird English-speaking zombie." She hefted the bat up with glaring eyes. This time, she'd go at the zombie or the boogeyman or the whatever properly armed. Her irritation at being woken up a second time gave enough of a motive to offset her sleepiness.

"...Sera?" The voice was familiar, and eyes silvery-blue in the darkness turned around to look at her quizzically. She sighed.

"Shit," she said, dropping the bat to the floor with a dull thump. "I'm going back to bed." Jack followed her to over to Jamie, regarding her with bemused blue eyes as she turned around to look at him with a hand to her forehead.

"So you're light sleeper. Were you going to hit me with that? My feelings!" he teased. When she didn't answer, he continued questioning her with a grin. "Surprise seeing you again. What are you doing here?" Jack asked, gesturing at the room.

"I could ask you the same thing," she grumbled, carefully turning on the bedside lamp lest it wake Jamie up.

"I was looking at his picture of the sledding from yesterday on his wall. Did you see it? He drew you, too; rather flattering I would say. He almost got the nose right. Now I'm standing here. Breathing. Talking to you. Et cetera."

"Very funny," she whispered, her voice flat. "Two can play at that game."

"Why so angry?" He said, raising an eyebrow. The guardians shenanigans collecting teeth had vastly improved his mood, and it was infectious enough to turn her annoyance into only mild exasperation.

"Coming from the guy who hasn't had to sleep in three-hundred years." They both looked at each other, waiting for someone to cave. Finally, Sera spoke again. "Jamie's parents have been kind enough to let me stay while I attempt to sort out what the hell I should do." He winced and opened his mouth to interrupt her, but she waved away his concern. "Aww, is that guilt I see on your face? Touching, but it's not like it's your fault that you got abducted by a humanoid bunny, the Abominable Snowman, and Bigfoot. Where did you go, anyways?" He shrugged, avoiding the question. North's workshop and the other guardians' doings weren't his secret to tell.

No matter how much he felt like he could trust her with his life's story after meeting her for less than two minutes. He guessed belief was weird like that.

"Still, I shouldn't have left you stranded alone. We'll talk to North and have him send you back," he said with a finality almost to convince himself. He was done being self-absorbed. She had been ripped from wherever she called home and cast into the middle of nowhere with no human necessities, and it was selfish of him to want to keep her here. Even if she was witty, funny, amusing to be around. Even if he could do with a breath of change, even if he needed a friend who he at least physically seemed to share the same age with.

Even if she was his first and only believer in three-hundred years.

It was his turn to wave away the concern she opened her mouth to voice, continuing over whatever words she might have said. "To better answer your question, we've been collecting teeth."

"'We'? Why?" As she spoke, he moved past her, slipping his hand under Jamie's pillow. His hand came out holding a coin instead of a tooth.

Speak of the devil.

"Thanks for the distraction, kiddo." The humanoid bunny's cocky voice drifted over to them from the corner of the room. "Apparently Frost's not as friendless as he'd like to believe. More's the better for me," he said as he lifted up his substantial rust-colored bag filled with teeth.

"Um..."

"Oh, my!" Bunnymund's shrug was accompanied by the flitting of excited wings. "Jack never said anything about you!" Jack chuckled at her beseeching look as Tooth fluttered around her in upside-down circles, bombarding her with questions that she was doing her best to give monosyllabic answers just as rapidly. North moved forward to envelope her hands in his own meaty grip, leaving Sandman, Jack and Bunnymund in the corner, the former dozing off and the latter with his arms folded.

"He didn't, did he?" Bunnymund's voice went unnoticed by them.

"Uh, guys..." That was Sera, no doubt trying to calm North and Tooth down, who were almost literally jumping up and down in celebration of poor Jack Frost's first believer. Jack turned to look at Bunnymund, rolling his eyes.

"I barely talked to her for five minutes before you abducted me. Sorry if I was a little shell-shocked at the time," he said sarcastically.

"You just didn't want to lose your sob story. 'Oh, look at me, I'm Jack Frost and I have no believers! Pity me!'" Bunnymund's imitation of him in a ridiculously high-pitched and suspiciously feminine voice was comical.

"If I had said that an hour before you tossed me over your shoulder like a caveman seducing a moose it would have been true." Jack cocked an eyebrow at him.

"Guys?" Sera again. Bunnymund's voice once again prevented him from glancing over to chuckle at her flustered, surrounded self.

"What, so she was born yesterday? Seems to me like you've had a believer for at _least_," Bunnymund paused to speculate Sera's age. "Oh, I'd say she's past the terrible twos. Maybe three?"

Jack only laughed.

Bunnymund returned the eyebrow at him. "What's so funny, Frost?"

He theatrically wiped a tear from his eye and smirked cryptically. "Just wait until she finds out you're calling her a toddler."

Bunnymund's eyes narrowed at that, and he squinted at him with suspicious eyes. Before he could inquire as to exactly what type of nuke she would use to blow him off the planet, said toddler inhaled a large breath and shouted.

"_Guys!"_

They turned to look at her, North and Tooth pausing in their ecstatic revelry. She blinked once, letting the silence grow—not too long, though, lest they start dancing again—before she finally lifted a hand and pointed.

They all turned and looked.

Whoops.

"Ho. Lee. Sh—" Jamie had only a split second to bask in sheer astonishment before Sera interrupted and immediately turned to face him.

"No! I explicitly told you that you did _not _hear that! Bad words, Jamie, _bad words. _Bad, _bad _words."

"Santa Claus," he said in awe, ignoring Sera, who promptly threw her hands up in the air. "The Tooth Fairy. The Easter Bunny. Sandman." His voice got progressively slower as he stared at them in sheer amazement, his jaw dropping. He just stared, and stared, and stared, and it became obvious that he wasn't going to include Jack Frost in that list of awe. Jack's humor faded, and they all looked at him. All of them. All of them, with their pitying gazes and sheepish smiles. All except Sera, who was currently busy scolding Jamie for nearly cussing. Bunnymund's imitation came back to him, and he realized he didn't _want _to be pitied anymore. His fist tightened around his staff until his knuckles were as white as snow.

"You're real. You _came! _I knew you guys would come!" He said that like he worshipped them. Like he was talking to gods. Jack set out to bear the next few moments of being reminded that he was invisible to ninety-nine point nine nine nine nine—et cetera—percent of sentient beings on the planet with an uncaring, stoic countenance, his gaze absently lingering on Sera. Looking at her as she pinched the bridge of her nose helped quell his jealousy, helped bring the faintest hint of a smile to his lips. His one believer who most likely wasn't even from this side of the country. As he regarded her, he shoved away the very unwelcome thought that Pitch probably felt the same jealousy a hundred times over. He might not be a goody-goody protector of the children and all things rainbowy and sparkly, but he was nothing like him.

"Suprise! We came," Tooth giggled in agreement, shrugging and beaming shyly. Jamie laughed in amazement, briefly falling back against his bed before lunging upwards once more to drink in the sight of them.

"I knew it! I knew you guys were real! See, Sera? See them?"

Bunnymund interrupted whatever reply she might have made. "Yeah, yeah, that's all nice and good, nice to meet you two. If you'll excuse the fiv—four of us, we've got a schedule to keep." He snapped his fingers in front of Sandy's face, startling the little guy awake. "Knock 'em out. With the dream sand," he added as Sandy proceeded to approach with fists drawn.

Chaos.

Chaos everywhere.

These were the unvoiced thoughts of Sera as sand bounced around the room in dizzying comets of golden light. Voices were raised and there was an oversized rabbit fleeing from Jamie's dog and people were slamming into the ground as they lost consciousness and holy-fucking-shit-what-the-fuck-is-happening-I-don't-know-so-I'm-going-to-scream-like-an-adult-until-everyone-shuts-up.

Her thoughts were interrupted as the ball of sand came straight for her face like a homing missile from hell, and she ducked. She almost patted herself on the back for awesomely avoiding it, but it bounced off the wall behind her and slammed in between her shoulder blades. She got a face full of frost-crusted blue hoodie as she fell forward before she completely lost consciousness.

Okay, so the little Sandman guy had given her a dream full of miniature elves. More of these pain-in-the-asses. Great.

"Yeah, I get that you like my hair," she told one who currently was draping her hair over it's body and posing like a runway model for his other elven friends, "but I kind of need to wake up, so I'll be seeing you buggers later."

She saluted the army of elves crawling over her body and swarming as far as the eye could see before sitting back up, rubbing her eyes. Blinking, she took in the sight of Jamie's room littered with sleeping people sprawled in haphazard positions. Someone had taken the time to lay her neatly on Jamie's small sofa, and as she sat up the springs creaked slightly. Among their unconscious figures, Jack and the Sandman-dude were no where to be seen. She sighed with what was quickly becoming a permanent feeling.

At least she was getting better at forcing her way out of lucid, supernaturally-induced dreams, right?

"Alright, guys, wake up." She rose from the couch, the soft padding of her feet accompanied by the groans and stretches of the rabbit, Santa Claus, and the refreshingly giddy fairy. Gazing out of the window, her eyes widened as she took in the rows of dark horses streaming down the streets and over the rooftops. They were larger than the ones that had been giving Jamie and Sophie nightmares, much larger, and she remedied that. "Wake up _now._ Houston, we have a problem."

"Pitch's nightmares," Santa confirmed in his Russian accent, groggily stretching his limbs. They crowded around the window before she was suddenly shoved out of it, interrupting her question as to exactly who that was. Looking at the horses, she could guess.

She landed softly on the front lawn snow, wincing. The others followed suit, and the Santa dude beckoned for his reindeer. She raised an eyebrow at the rather interesting sleigh, and suddenly found herself sitting in the back seat.

"Sure this is a good idea, North?" Bunnymund said. "Not safe for the kid."

"No time to argue! I hope you like roller-coasters, girlie." North said, sounding more excited to run some sand horses over than he should have been. He lashed his reins, and Sera gripped the railings as they lifted off. She did, actually, and grinned in good roller-coaster spirit as they shot forward. North directed his reindeer to follow the nightmares, streaming overhead. They were all headed towards a swirling mist of brilliant sand, and the sleigh passed overhead Sandy and Jack's rising forms. The fairy who had introduced herself as Tooth lifted out of the sleigh, and North took a rather dangerous standing position on his side of the railing and struck out at passing nightmares with his dual-wielded scimitars. Only Bunnymund kept his seat beside her, and she squinted at his cocky grin before his boomerang shot past her ear with a spray of black sand and a whistle of wind.

Jack suddenly landed on the right wing of the sleigh, steadying himself. "What are you doing here?" He asked, sparing a glance at Bunnymund and North who were too busy having fun killing ponies to answer for her.

"Moral support," she said cheekily as she pried her hands off of the railing and gave him two thumbs up. "Go team!"

"You shouldn't be here. It's too dangerous," he said shortly, already seeking another horse to decapitate.

"Are you kidding? This is epic!" He rolled his eyes and shot her an impatient look before launching off once more. Bright explosions of ice, alternating dark and light sand, and Easter egg grenades littered the night sky like fireworks, and she wondered what any believers down below might see if they were awake. "We need popcorn," she said in conspiring aside to Bunnymund, and he shook his head at her with a chuckle.

"For once, I actually agree with him," Bunnymund said.

The fighting was getting more intense. For every nightmare they squished, five more replaced it. A miasma of black sand blocked out the stars and the street lights below, and above they could see Sandy's cloud of floating gold surrounded by Pitch as he fought off the worse of the attack. Tooth flew back to the sleigh, in danger of being overwhelmed, and Bunnymund covered her retreat. Sera's eyes watered as she gazed upward through the cutting, icy wind, and she realized what was happening at the same time everyone else did.

Pitch released his arrow, his sickly grey hands gentle, his smile malevolent. It flew through the air like a lover's carress, twisting through the flecks of combating sand towards Sandy's whirling platform. Both those in the sleigh and Jack, still in the air, watched in horror. She was hurled against the backing of the sleigh as they shot forward even faster than before towards Sandy, but Jack was quicker, so much quicker. She could see every fiber of his being pushed towards being faster, being stronger, being _more._ He was close, so close where they lacked behind, the reindeer swimming through the air at a slug's pace compared to him.

So close.

The arrow slammed into Sandy's back.

_No._

It ripped itself from Jack's throat, echoing to their ears below. It was like a tide of sheer power and emotion, expressing all of their mutually-felt shock in a single word. How ironic was it that Pitch's arrow had imbedded itself in the same spot where Sandy's ball of sand had hit her?

_No_.

An explosion of cold, rippling across frozen strands of crawling, writhing, ash-like sand. It burst forth, turning the already frigid air into bitter, stinging frostbite. Where they had failed, it had a chance. A chance to preserve the last golden speck of Sandy in ice, a chance to immortalize the Guardian of Dreams and the dreams of the children. But they were all too slow, too weak. Too late.

_No._

He was gone, no more than one of Tooth's memories now. No more wide smiles of cheer, no more hopeful, lighthearted dreams. No more football-shaped tufts of sand, no more floating strands of bright dust. The ice raged at its failure, curling, warping, dominating the nightmares. Pitch's smile faded, and the briefest trails of frost wrapped themselves around his black robe before he melted into the shadows and vanished at the destruction of his nightmares. Having consumed all traces of his once massive, menacing army, the ice imploded, twisting unto itself until there was nothing left but faint trails that only hinted at a distant dream.

_No._

Jack fell, his body shredded by cutting sand limply surrendering to the void the pull of his violent and sudden blast of power had created. Tooth cushioned his fall, dragged downwards by its force, and they caught the two in the sleigh. He sprawled in the seat, his staff rolling from limp fingers, landing with a thud. His head lolled weakly, and above the frantic voices of the other Guardians the word in his eyes was stronger, louder than any of theirs. Sera met his gaze, the desperation, the shock, the crushing sorrow in them ten times stronger than those mirrored in her.

His body completely gave way as whatever strength he had left vanished with his consciousness. She knotted a hand in his icy hoodie to keep him from slumping to the floor of the sleigh as he let out a single groan.

His eyes rolled back into his head.

He knew no more.

_No._


	6. Give a Whistle

_No._

Yellow eyes narrowed in fury as the frantic fluttering of hundreds of thousands of wings accompanied his enraged pacing. How dare that scrap of skinny adolescent, that arrogant wretch of a boy destroy his children? How dare he wipe out the entirety of his beautiful army, his lovely creatures?

How _could_ he?

And there lay his dilemma. How did the boy possess such a power enough to rival his own? In a single blow he had frozen all of his creations. He would have to start anew, rebuild. He reached upwards, shadows curling around one of the cages containing the fairies, and suddenly there was a shivering sprite clutched in his fist. The brave little thing stabbed her toothpick nose into his finger as a last stand, and he regarded it with a tolerant smile.

"Sleep well, little tooth fairy," he said to her, and his knuckles turned pale as he suddenly compressed his fist. Blood splattered, blending into the deep black of his sleeve. He crushed her without so much as a little peep as he would crush the moon's precious Guardians, as he would crush the hopes and dreams of their precious children.

As he would crush Jack Frost.

After all, they all had their weaknesses, didn't they? He regarded the mutilated husk of the tiny corpse in his hand with thoughtful eyes, her sisters' horrified screams music to his ears. The Sandman had been proof of that. He had been his real enemy all along, the greatest threat to his plot. And he had died, just like the others would. He had died to the Boogeyman's own hand, the Boogeyman's own arrow, proving that they were more mortal than they would like to believe. Walking forward to the ancient globe in the center of his temple, his castle, his home and lair, he smiled at the faint lights slowly winking out. They would only continue to fade more once he recreated his army.

"Little ones," Pitch called tauntingly to the cages above, "don't fret so. Your comrade has given me much inspiration upon her noble sacrifice for the greater good. For _my_ good. See? Look how, even in death, she furthers my cause." As he spoke, the blood on his hand darkened and withered, slowly drying up into specks of glimmering sand. A small nightmare coalesced in his hand, yet still malleable and unformed, and he sighed. He would need more, so much more death to remake even a single horse. Luckily for him, he had as much as he would need, and he bared sharp fangs as he smiled upwards.

They all had their weaknesses. For every one of his children they had killed, he would kill hundreds of theirs. Each of these little insignificant deaths would exploit dear Toothiana's sweet naivety, North's heart of gold, Bunnymund's fragile feelings behind his stoic countenance.

And Jack Frost.

Ah, Jack. Always Jack. Jack, Jack, Jack. It always came back to Jack Frost. Here was a third party, someone who wasn't necessarily completely against him. Here was a neutral party, someone he might be able to tempt with dark secrets. Both had powers that didn't need to be sustained off of wretched children, though with belief would no doubt be even stronger. Perhaps he could play on his insecurity, his desire to have loyalty and faith, his desire to know his memories. What was he but another teenager with problems and uncertainty? It would be easy to manipulate his mind into thinking that he was a friend, someone who cared for him.

And how better to strike than with a back-stabbing betrayal?

He eyed the fairies, seeking for a particularly special one to use next. Suddenly, he frowned, remembering the girl who had broken out of his nightmare by herself. She, the annoying one, with the dark hair, the wild look? Had she been the very same one nestled in North's sleigh, protected by his slicing scimitars and the rodent's hurled sticks? He paused. She _had _been the very same one. He growled slightly, narrowing his eyes at this revelation. Who was this girl, undoubtedly human, that she consorted with Guardians the way one would with acquaintances or casual friends? And _this_ time his narrowed eyes gave way to a malicious, promising lift of the corners of his lips.

Perhaps he had found a weakness.

He grasped another fairy with that same evil smile.

And squeezed.

* * *

A bed abundantly stocked with blankets.

A small, feminine giggle.

Soft hands against his face.

Someone sitting beside him.

Something sticky on his nose.

"No, we can't put that kind _all_ over him. He'll see them and tear them off."

Sera's voice, and another giggle.

Jack finally opened his eyes at that, because what little he was aware of in his half-awake state was seriously beginning to freak him out. His eyes focused on the person sitting beside him, her hair curling over her shoulder to half-hide the shy fairy he had rescued in the crook of her neck. Green eyes met his, and Sera smiled.

"See? Look! We're twins." She held up her hand, decorated in band-aids, and when he glanced at his own laying at his side the bite-mark on it was effectively obscured by a mass of haphazard band-aids. More dotted what bare torso was exposed by his blankets, and he abruptly tried to sit up. Suddenly uncomfortably aware of her hand against his lower sternum pushing him back down, he tried to speak. The best that he got out was a raw sound of confused what-the-fuck before she leaned over and reached for a pitcher on the bedside table. The fairy cloaked in her hair fluttered out and grasped an adjacent cup as Sera filled it with water, lifting it over to Jack with struggling wings. He held it with his decorated hand and briefly felt her tiny, delicate hands against his before she lifted into his hair and nestled into it.

"Are the rumors true, Baby-tooth?" A few white strands fell into his eyes as the fairy's nod rustled his hair, and he started to choke on his water. Sera plucked the cup from his hand before he spilled it and put it back on the table. He was able to get out a few mangled words in between coughs, and she rose from the bed after assuring herself that he wasn't about to choke to death.

"Apparently, they've placed bets on whether or not your hair naturally smells like mint. We're at North's workshop," she added as an afterthought when he shot her a you-know-what-I-mean look. She walked over to the other side of the room, grasping a bundle of clothing and tossing it lightly at him. "You passed out after..." She shrugged.

"Sandy?" he was able to get out as he took another, smaller sip of water. Her averted face and the slight shaking of her head were enough of an answer, and the cup slipped from his suddenly numb hands. She turned at the sound of the cup clattering against a floor, whatever words of comfort she might have said silenced by the empty expression on his face.

"Jack..." He just looked at her, and she sighed, picking up the cup and putting it back on the table. "They're waiting for you outside." A small smile, one that he wasn't able to return. "Your staff is by the door." She moved over to the door, light playing against her profile as she glanced over her shoulder at him and Baby-tooth. "Listen... don't feel bad, alright? It's not... you know."

"Thank you," he said after a moment, almost politely. She sighed again. He waited until she left, gazing out of the window before the door shut close. Sitting up, the covers fell from his torso and exposed the full extent of the injury done to his body. At places, his skin was bruised or red, with band-aids of varying sizes covering the worst of his lacerations. He clenched his fists, feeling the muscles in them move, and stared once more into the distance.

The Sandman.

Dead.

'Baby-tooth', as Sera had apparently named her, was the one who finally distracted him. He became aware of her floating directly in front of his face, with her hands patting the band-aid covering the wound the elf had given to him. He blinked, and she smiled shyly, her small hands tugging at a strand of hair. Following her pull, he finally started to pull an almost identical blue sweatshirt to the one that had been shredded over his head in robotic motions. His feet poked out of his pant, and he rolled them up to expose his bare feet. He sighed as he started towards the door. If left to his own thoughts, he might have gazed blankly out of that window until the ceiling crashed in on him, but Sera had said they were waiting for him. He wrapped his bandaged hand around the staff propped against the door, and left the room with Baby-tooth sitting on his shoulder once more.

Darkness had replaced the confetti, the music, the frantic toy-making that he had witnessed the last time he was here. Only the occasional light, enough to navigate the vast building, lit up the hallways and spiraling staircases. Lamentation had replaced gaiety, and through the daze that warded off depression he thought it fitting as he followed the sound of the elves' bells tinkling in mourning.

Eventually, his feet led him to a ring of candles lighting a square of marble on the floor in which the shape of Sandy's figure graced. The elves and yetis surrounding the remaining guardians in the inner circle parted as he approached, engulfing him in their mass as he moved forward.

"Jack," North said softly, gravely, as he came forth to look upon Sandy's likeness of stone. Baby-tooth fluttered off of his shoulder over to Tooth. He briefly met each of their gazes before he took the proffered candle. Staring at the flame, his face was expressionless as he crouched to lower it into the ring of flickering fire. By unanimous agreement, North began to speak without frivolity or flowery words.

"Sandy was the best of us," he said. "He was the wisest, the oldest, the first Guardian to step forward. May you ever sleep well, old friend." He glanced over at Tooth, who lifted her head slightly.

"He never raged, never fought. Sandy didn't need words to speak. All he needed was a dream to express his art." Here, she paused, and Jack kept his gaze on the candle-flame lest the sorrow in her eyes call forth his own. She eventually continued, her voice strained and soft.

"And now that dream is gone."

Bunnymund, next. His arms were crossed over his chest, and his head was lowered to gaze at the ground. "He was a damned good fighter, and a treasured friend at that. The world had him as a protector for thousands of years, and yet look at what we would all do to have him back again for a single day. His loss makes the world a darker place."

His turn.

They all looked at him, like they expected him to spit out some grand epitaph that would somehow be worthy of Sandy. And, despite himself, despite the numbness that was only barely stopping him from grasping his hair in both hands and breaking down, he found that words suddenly came to his lips and tumbled out.

"None of us can express how big a hole his death left behind for the four of us to fill. And yet, candles and words will have to do." His mouth twisted in bitterness. "I wish I could have saved him. I wish I could have stopped Pitch in time. I wish I could have..." He shook his head, his eyes unfocused, and he exhaled quietly, closing his lips. There was only silence once more.

Eventually, he became aware of the outer layers of the surrounding circle unobtrusively fading away deeper into the workshop. He stayed until there was only the occasional sound of bells before he turned and left. He floated aimlessly into North's workshop, rising past workbenches littered with tools and toys left abandoned half-finished in search of solace. His bare feet touched the frosty sill of a large window, and he sat where the moon could bathe him in silver light that reflected off of the snow in a bright radiance that was ten times brighter than that of the sun. From somewhere far away, the melancholy sound of piano, of violin, of harp and soft, indistinct vocals drifted to his ears, and while he shook his head at the elves' love of music, he again thought it was more than appropriate. What better way to_ feel_ than with poignant, painful music? A bitter, wry smile at that.

Tendrils of spiraling frost spreading from his forehead against the glass had almost covered the entire window before someone finally approached him. He was surprised when Bunnymund took a seat across from him, having expected Sera with her jokes and lightheartedness. A part of his paralyzed mind wondered where she had gone, since she hadn't been present at the ceremony.

A part of him was too desolate to care.

"You alright, mate?" He just shrugged in response. "Sandy would've been proud of you, you know. He wouldn't have wanted you to sit around and mope over him."

"Proud of _what? _That I failed?"

"That you _stood up_ against Pitch, stood up for what's right. You saved us, Jack, and you're more important than you think. You've got an amazing strength inside of you; all we've got to learn how to do is control it, right?" His paw lightly punched him in the shoulder, and Jack looked at him with another shrug, albeit this time a slightly less gloomy one.

"If we're going to collapse on each others' shoulders right now, I should say that I'm sorry for the kangaroo puns. We can't afford to be at each others' throats right now."

"Hah! Someone needs to catch this on tape. It's the accent, isn't it? For the record, though, I apologize for... you know. That was a low blow. 'Sides, looks like you've found yourself a believer, right? Everyone starts at the beginning, with just one."

"Huh. Where did you start?" Jack cocked his head at him, sitting somewhat straighter as the majority of his disconsolation was distracted. Bunnymund leaned back, his hands behind his head against the wall.

"Whew, got to think about that one. Waaaaay back. A young Jewish child, I think. I don't really remember."

Jack stared at him incredulously. "...You don't _remember?"_

"They all fade away, Jack. Ask North or Tooth, I bet you that they won't remember either. Plague, famine, war, tragedy all takes them away at some point. At first it hurts, more than anything, but then a thousand years pass and suddenly you struggle to recall the exact timbre of their laugh, how they smiled in that certain way, even what their name was. That spitfire of yours, Sera, was it? You won't have time to spend every waking moment with a single believer as a Guardian. Sure, kids are special, but soon she'll be nothing more than a distant memory. And you'll have your hands tied bringing joy to _all _of the world's children. That's just the way it is."

Silence.

How did he feel about that? It brought an ache to his chest that he couldn't decipher. In ten years, would he even care about her anymore? Sera, his first believer, his first human contact in three hundred years? The first person who genuinely spoke to him and made him laugh? He barely knew anything about her. Would this possessive feeling, this desire for companionship fade? Would he cease to care about her when, _if_ he had _millions_ of believers? When she went back home and he became invisible to every single person that he might care about?

_When she died?_

"Why she still here?" he asked, suddenly needing to know. That wasn't what he meant to ask, though. "_Is_ is she still here?"

"She told us some of her story while you were unconscious—no, we didn't leave her completely in charge of your patching-up. Tooth helped!" Jack grimaced impatiently. "I don't know how much she told you, but it made completely no sense at all. Still, we were going to send her home, but North was unable to find his snow globe. So, she's stuck here for the time being. Besides, we all agreed she's currently probably the best anti-depressant around here, and you look like you need one."

He was suddenly relieved that North apparently had a bad habit of losing his snow globe. "Might as well make good on what time I've got, right? Thanks for the talk. Roo." He was able to grin at Bunnymund, who returned the expression with a raise of the eyebrow and a shake of the head before he lifted into the air once more and floated into the main room. He glanced at the dim lights and at the spiraling staircases both above and below him, passing occasional yetis who had gotten back to work. Eventually he found her by following the sound of the distant music.

She was seated on the lap of a yeti in view of the moon, her fingers plucking at the strings of a guitar. A few bells clinked together from the elves arrayed around her, and he saw Baby-tooth sitting once more in her hair. The yetis poised around the other instruments were for the most part silent, listening to her quiet voice. In the moments before her fingers stilled at the end of the song, he was able to witness for the first time her simply _being _rather than trying out whatever new wit she had come up with. She sang—admittedly somewhat cliché, but very much needed—of hope and determination, and Jack felt the last remnants of sorrow around his heart ease away. The yetis and elves realized his presence before she did, and only when they moved away to give them some privacy to speak did she realize she was there.

"You didn't include playing guitar in your brief repertoire of 'all-around awesome'. Or singing." He took a seat across from her, and she sank back to the ground once more with a shrug.

"It was something to occupy free-time over school breaks in highschool, at least. They haven't heard modern music in forever, so I thought I'd enlighten them with some Jason Mraz. So, I see you're somewhat less mopey now. Did Bunny talk to you?" Sera said, smiling playfully. He acquiesced to her change of topic, eying her curiously.

"'Bunny'?"

"Yep. Talked to him while you were asleep. Seemed nice."

"I would have loved to see how that went," he said, chuckling. "The both of you are still alive, so I guess it couldn't have been too bad."

"So, how was it?" Her eyes were sympathetic, and he knew what she was talking about. He inhaled and exhaled slowly.

"It was... I don't know. I just wish that I could have done something before he..." he trailed off. They all avoided that word, all of them, as if saying it aloud would made it all the more real.

Death.

Silence yet again.

"I'm sorry, Jack. Some things in life are bad." He started to shrug as was his response to any display of feelings or emotions, but she continued on, her fingers once more finding the strings of her guitar. "They can really make you mad! Other things just make you swear and curse. When you're chewing on life's gristle—"

"Sera, what in the world—"

"—Don't grumble, give a whistle! And this'll help things turn out for the best... and..."

"What the—"

"Always look on the bright side of life!" Finally she paused, looking at him expectantly. He just stared back at her. Baby-tooth clapped her hands excitedly from her place atop her head.

"Come on, Jack, I can't whistle."

"I... don't even..."

She hummed a tune under her breath for him to mimic before she continued. "Always look on the light side of life!" She paused again, sighing as he remained silent before she hummed the tune again. A nearby elf helped her out, and she grinned at him before continuing. "If life seems jolly rotten, there's something you've forgotten! And that's to laugh and smile and dance and sing. When you're—"

"Sera, I have no idea what you're singing."

"Aww, really? I'm ashamed of you. One of these days, I'm going to have to enlighten you with modern-ish culture. Oh well, I've got a million others. Take your pick!" She laughed at his expression. "I'm bluffing. I only ever learned, what, four songs? Five?"

Finally, the arrival of North at the scene brought a most-likely temporary stop to her absurd, nonsensical singing. "Ah, what have we here?" he exclaimed, propping his fists on his hips. "I see you are serenading my yetis. Come come, now, Bunnymund wishes to speak with you, Jack. We've a plan, you see! And, of course, you may come too, girlie." Sera gave the guitar over to the care of one of the yetis and stood up, holding out a hand for him to grasp. Her hand was warm, her smile tilting his lips slightly into one of his own. They started down the stairs, Jack walking on two feet for the benefit of her and North to the sound of happier music as they started playing again.

"It will be magnificent! Easter, tomorrow!" Suddenly, North paused in the middle of the staircase. "Now, Jack, I know this is a difficult time for you. Very confusing, very heart-breaking. But this is not the end to the world. This doesn't mean that you have to... sacrifice any... morals."

It was North's turn to be stared at like he was insane, and Sera and Baby-tooth's sudden outburst of giggles were suspicious to say the least. "_What_ are you talking about?" Jack said, frowning in confusion. North just sighed.

"Jack, why on Earth are you wearing a pink Hello-Kitty band-aid on your face?"


	7. Painting Eggs, Flipping Tables

They eyed the hole in the ground that Bunnymund had jumped into. Only the quick action of Jack had kept Sera from falling where the other Guardians had already slipped. They stood on the rim of it, shooting a look at each other.

"Huh. It's like Alice in Wonderland," Sera noted. She shrugged inexplicably as Jack looked at her questioningly and swept a hand towards the hole. "Well, Easter isn't going to happen by itself. After you!"

"Ladies first," he said, smirking and bowing his head slightly at her.

"And who said chivalry was dead?" she remarked, rolling her eyes. "Hold on tight, Baby-tooth." She hesitated on the rim, glancing sidelong at Jack, and he recognized the mischievous look on her face the instant before he was shoved in.

It caught him off balance, but he managed to float in the cramped tunnel as Sera jumped in and suddenly slid past him. The hole closed off North's workshop and whatever light source illuminated the tunnel. Suddenly finding flight much harder in the darkness, he smashed headfirst into one of the the grassy, slippery sides of the tunnel. Grimacing with a grunt of pain, he slid forward and crashed into her, barely keeping his grip on his staff. Limbs tangled, and he felt Baby-tooth's nose poke a hole in his sweatshirt, grazing the skin of his arm. The speed at which they were traveling ripped the shouting from their throats, which stopped abruptly when they landed inelegantly on the floor of Bunnymund's warren.

After tumbling and rolling over several times, Sera landed on top of him, one of her arms trapped beneath his back. Baby-tooth's nose embedded itself into the earth near his ear, narrowly avoiding stabbing him again. From above their tangled forms, the other guardians were dusting themselves off from similar landings. He blinked, gathering his bearings.

"Enjoying the view?" he asked Sera, who was busy trying to extricate herself from him. She huffed in amusement, her green eyes flitting down to look at him through the curtain of her hair that blocked the rest of the world out.

"I don't know. Are you?" She reached over him with her free hand to gently free Baby-tooth, who then fluttered near them, patiently waiting for them to get up. "Alright, get off of my arm, Jack."

"You're the one on top," he said with an impish raise of his eyebrows. She laughed a bit, rolling off to his side and tugging at her arm once more. He finally gave in and sat up, raising himself to his feet with the help of his staff and holding out a hand for her. Her hand was warm and smooth against his chilled skin for a brief moment before he released it.

"Well, that's ironic," she pointed out, tilting her chin briefly at the newly inflicted wound on his nose while she began idly picking out the grass caught in her hair. "You should have kept Hello-Kitty on!" He moved his nose slightly with his hand, and, satisfied that it wasn't broken, wiped the blood off on his pants with a shrug.

"Aren't you supposed to dig scars?"

"Alright, alright, welcome to the Warren, yada yada. Enough of the—" Bunnymund started, interrupting whatever response Sera might have made before he was similarly interrupted by a faint, ominous sound echoing towards them from one of the various tunnels leading away. Jack stepped in front of Sera and Baby-tooth, pointing the hook of his staff towards the source of the sound as the rest of the guardians similarly tensed up. "Pitch," he growled, poising his boomerang to be thrown at the slightest hint of curling shadow. The sound increased, a high-pitched scream that raised his hackles.

"Why wait? Let's welcome him." North led the charge. Scimitars parted the air, ready to attack. They lunged forward, ready to meet another mass of nightmares and dark powers with all they had.

Only to be stopped by a little girl.

"Hey Sophie!" Sera slipped past their dumbfounded selves, crouching low before her to talk eye to eye. The excited shrieks stopped. Sophie gave her one of the eggs in her arms over to Sera, reaching up with her free hand to prod Baby-tooth.

"Pretty," she giggled.

"Sophie? What are you doing here?" Jack came forward, crouching similarly next to Sera. Sophie gave him an egg as well in answer, and from behind he could hear North checking his clothing once again and muttering about his snow globe.

"We don't have time for this, folks. I want all of you on painting duty. Come on, chop chop." Bunnymund recovered quickly from the shock, immediately back into work mode.

"Relax, Bunny," Sera told him over her shoulder. Jack chuckled slightly, standing up again.

"_Relax? _Easter is tomorrow, kiddo, and we've still got thousands of eggs to go. We don't have time to waste relaxing." Already he was moving towards the tunnel Sophie had emerged from, herding them forward. "You, here. Baby-tooth, here. Tooth, here. Yeti number one, here." Bunnymund pointed out where he wanted them to be stationed. Coincidentally, he had put Jack on the far other side of the slow-moving, rainbow-glistening stream from Sera. As if reading his mind, Bunnymund fixed the two of them with a glare.

"No flirting," he growled. Jack raised an eyebrow at that. Flirting? How much of that was the desire to get as much work done as possible with the least amount of hindrance, and how much of that was to protect him from getting attached to someone who would inevitably and inadvertently cause him pain? It was too late, he wanted to tell Bunnymund. How could he separate himself even mentally from the one human who he could talk to and would actually talk back? The one human he could high five, the one human who he could crash into in a rabbit hole and who he could offer a helping hand to? Sera beat him to it, though, with her response undoubtedly more lighthearted than his would have been.

"Pfft," she scoffed, "flirting jokes got old in middle school. Besides, we're bros, am I right?" She winked at him and proceeded to fist bump, which he returned after a moment. 'Bros' would suffice.

It would have to.

"...Right," Bunnymund said doubtfully. "Enough chit-chat, let's go already." He made shooing motions, and Sera gave him a jaunty two-fingered salute before moving off to her spot riddled with white eggs that were walking around aimlessly. North leapt over the stream with a hefty bound, similarly moving to the mass of white eggs waiting for him, and despite Bunnymund's strict instructions not to socialize, Tooth and her smaller sister sat next to Sera and began talking—meeping, on Baby-tooth's end—about what colors and designs they wanted to use.

"Guess that leaves _you_ with baby-sitting," Jack said, a gust of cold wind blowing him to his place across the stream. He grinned at the look on his face as Bunnymund took a seat a few yards away from him, Sophie using the straps on his torso to haul herself up on his back. Blowing a frosty mist into his hand, Jack used his breath to guide a large snowflake over to him. It landed on his nose, sending a small spray of glittering blue ice into his face, and Bunnymund blinked several times as though seeing his home through new eyes. He pulled Sophie off his back and sat her down on his lap, curling over her protectively, and from here Jack could barely hear him talking to her about what she wanted to paint. With a satisfied smile, Jack pulled his eyes away and left him to it.

Sera was staring at him, her gaze briefly darting from him to Bunnymund and back again. _What the fuck? _she mouthed, and the corners of his mouth lifted into a full-out grin as his chuckle grew into a laugh that he had to suppress if he didn't want to fall into the stream. He just shrugged innocently at her incredulous look, and she rolled her eyes at his grin before she turned back to her work. His eyes lingered on her for a moment before he sat down, staff in his lap, and gazed around.

_Alright. Painting eggs. Shouldn't be too hard, right? Easy as pie. Easy as taking candy from a baby. Easy as creating a snow day in Canada in the middle of winter._

_Right?_

Well, there was a brush. He plucked it from the provided can, poking at the hairs with his fingers. Okay, paint. He opened the large pack of paints, eyeing the multitude of colors with some trepidation. He dipped his brush in some yellow and slapped a smiley face on one of the eggs. All done. Some of the blood on his nose dripped onto the egg, and he pulled the sleeve of his sweatshirt over his hand and grasped it to stanch the flow. Frowning at the red splatter ruining its smiley face, Jack repainted it over the blood, making a messy, orange swirl. He set the egg aside, setting another in front of him and painting the same yellow-orange smiley face. And again, and again, and again.

"Maybe a little more... colorful, mate." Bunnymund's voice came from above, and as he looked up a decorative Easter egg in blues, pinks, and yellows landed on his lap. Jack compared it to his with a sigh. Sophie burbled at him from atop Bunnymund's shoulder before he continued his inspection of the eggs. Jack dipped an egg into the green well of the painting tray. There.

"What is this?" Bunnymund was saying from across the stream. "This is Easter, kiddo, not some tattoo parlor for you to try out god knows what on my eggs."

"It's art!" Sera protested in defense of the intricate black and white tribal swirls that shaped the feathers of a raven, the curls of talons, the beak of a bird of prey on the egg that Bunnymund was holding. An egg was dropped into her lap as well.

"Make it like that."

"As you command," Sera said gravely, sighing and rolling her eyes as soon as his back was turned. She shot a look at Jack, tilting her head pointedly at Bunnymund. Another blue spray of ice burst in his face, and she mouthed her thanks.

He sighed at his work, finding himself less inclined to paint them and more inclined to look around at the others' work. North and his yetis were decorating theirs with Christmas festivity, spots of white accenting the rich greens and vivid reds. Tooth's eggs mirrored the bright, happy colors she preferred, with Baby-tooth using her small fingers dipped in paint for fine details. Sera seemed to be having the opposite problem of his: a large pile of unpainted eggs were forsaken in favor of the painstaking beauty of one.

Eventually, he put the brush down and dusted off his pants before flipping the tray of paint all over his eggs and shoving them into the stream. He watched them float downstream for awhile, lifting into the air to follow them. Plucking them out, he speckled them with white snow flakes and blew a soft breath on each of them, turning them into various shades of blue. Finally satisfied, he returned to his spot with his completed batch nestled in the crooks of his arms and in the pockets of his sweatshirt.

Bunnymund was nagging Sera again. He floated over after depositing his on the dewy grass, eyeing the egg he was complaining about now.

"...Do you think this is?" he was saying.

"It looks fine, Bunny," Tooth said. Bunnymund sighed.

"Of course you would say that. She painted _you _on it." On closer inspection, a small portrait of Tooth covered half of the egg, with delicate golden swirls and magenta flowers taking up the rest of the other half. Bunnymund switched his attention to Jack as he approached. "Great. Now we have winter eggs, tooth eggs, Christmas eggs, and I-don't-even-know-what eggs. And don't you do that snow stuff of yours on me again, Jack. This is _serious."_

"Well, you know what they say, Roo. If you want it done right, do it yourself."

"Know what? That's great advice, Jack. Why don't you two take this kid home?" He gestured at Sophie, who was busy terrorizing eggs while half-asleep at his feet.

"Bunnymund, are you sure this is a good idea? We need him to protect the eggs. What if Pitch comes back?" Tooth paused. She looked down at the fluttering of Baby-tooth and nodded at her, who then alighted on Sera's shoulder. Bunnymund let out a sigh.

"You're right, I'm sorry. Just stressed."

"Nah," Jack said. "We'd be glad to take her home. The little lady's getting tired, isn't she?" Sophie nodded at him, reaching up with tiny, chubby hands to be picked up. "Don't worry, we'll be back in a few. Quick as a bunny!"

"Alright, then. Stay safe." Bunnymund echoed Tooth's sentiment, and tapped his foot against the ground before returning to his painting. A hole opened up in the ground, and they looked down into its depths.

"Here, hold her for a sec." Jack passed Sophie over to Sera, adjusting his grip on his staff. He eyed Bunnymund's retreating form, and Sera laughed.

"Might want to try something more than a flake. He's going to need it." She grinned at him before jumping down in the hole.

Jack curled his free hand, snow forming between the digits of his fingers. He hefted the snowball consideringly once it was complete, pulling his arm back and taking a step forward. The muscles in his arm clenched as he hurled it, and it slammed into the back of Bunnymund's head. Snow exploded, mingling into his fur and collapsing on the grass below, and Bunnymund stopped dead in his tracks.

"_Frost!"_

Jack chuckled, tipped his head at Tooth, and escaped from his frost-tempered wrath down the hole. Above, it closed, and it was dark once more.

He slid down the tunnel, this time without any major crashes. Somehow defying gravity, he popped out into the middle of a dense, snowy forest. This time, the hole stayed open, as if waiting for them to return to the Warren. Sera, Sophie, and Baby-tooth were waiting for him, all of who looked cold and chilled. Sera handed him Sophie, who was shivering in her sleep.

"How was it?"

"Let's just say that you might want to hide when we get back." Jack smirked, and Sera shook her head at him.

"I don't think you can fly the both of us at the same time, so would you mind grabbing my stuff once you drop her off and leave a note saying something on the lines that I exploded? Baby-tooth and I will meet you back here." Jack stopped mid-nod, frowning.

"You. Exploded," he said slowly and punctually with his eyebrows raised. She shrugged, folding her arms for warmth.

"Her parents are going to think that I'm an ungrateful and possibly-in-danger lunatic for disappearing in the middle of the night, so, yeah."

"I could take you back. They won't have to know you left." He could see her pause, carefully considering it.

"Not that sleeping for, what, an hour before dawn, doesn't sound appealing... but..." She shrugged again, Baby-tooth bouncing on her shoulder. "You know. Besides, I was supposedly going to start trying to get back home today as far as they know."

"Even if North can't find his snow globe, Roo's rabbit holes would probably do the work," he said, shifting Sophie's sleeping form slightly against him. Selfless. He _would _be selfless. Her smile was half-hearted.

"I appreciate the offer, but I don't think his rabbit holes will work." Jack cocked his head.

"Why is that?"

"It's a long story. We'll talk about it when you get back," she said, waving away his concern. "Me and Baby-tooth are getting cold, and I'm sure Sophie is missing her bed." As if to confirm it, Sophie murmured in her sleep, a fist tightening its grasp on his hood.

"Alright. And I do still need to ask you a couple hundred questions," he said with a promising grin. A gust of cold, winter air stirred the hair from her shoulders before he lifted off, taking the wind with him.

She winced as soon as he was gone.

What was she supposed to tell him? That she was from another god-knows-what frigging _universe?_ The truth, she decided. She would tell him the truth. Not that he was only the creature of a movie producer's mind, that he was but a character on the big screen and even less of one in the minds of children—_that_ would hurt a million times more than simply not being believed in, but enough to give him the general gist of it and maybe make him take a second look at whatever sort of friendship they had coincidentally created. He had been honest with her, and she would return the favor. That's just what friends did.

She leaned against the trunk of a tree, arms still folded around herself for warmth. Baby-tooth's hummingbird wings fluttered against her face, and she turned her head slightly in her direction.

"Sleepy, Baby-tooth?" A tiny yawn was her answer. "It's alright if you fall asleep. I'll stay up and wait for Jack." The tiny sprite mimed being too cold to sleep, which she didn't have to work too hard to achieve. Sera sighed, nodding in agreement. "I feel ya. Makes me almost wish for those eighty-degree winters again. Almost." Baby-tooth looked at her questioningly.

"It didn't snow a lot. Maybe once every four years, if we were lucky." Sera smiled a bit. "So it's amazing, being here, but ridiculously cold." Baby-tooth pat her on the neck drowsily, leaving her to look around at the forest as the pine needles swayed in the wind as she dozed off. She loved it here, already missing even the cold weather. Her eyes gazed around, storing up sights to stay her once she was back home. The trails of frost crawling up the trunks of the trees. The snow cushioning everything in a haze of white.

The pale face staring at her from in between the trunks of two trees a distance away.

She screamed.

"Oh _shit_. Shit, shit, shit. Baby-tooth, wake up. Wake up and _run for your life_. Go!" The fairy's frightened and confused face was the last she saw of her as she flew off into the approaching dawn. Sera exhaled loudly, her palms sweating, her pulse thrumming. Where did he go? She searched the forest wildly, clutching the trunk of the tree behind her.

_Okay, okay. Calm down._ She had to get the hell out of here. Her hands pawed at her pockets, searching for her twenty dollars, only to remember that Jack was still getting her wallet among other things from the Bennett's house. Well, great.

She was _so_ screwed.

She backed away, trying to remember survival tips. She was supposed to block his line-of-sight, right? Put trees in between them? Walk backwards? The hole leading back to Bunnymund's warren was briefly engulfed in shadow, and when it passed the hole was gone. There went her escape route.

_Sera._

She panicked and broke out into a flat-out run, sprinting for all that her life was worth. Her breath came fast, cold air burning her lungs as her heart hammered in her chest. Something grabbed, _wrapped_ around her ankle, and she tripped and fell, slamming into the icy earth riddled with roots. A twig behind her snapped, and she wrenched her eyes close, burying her head into her arms. He was behind her, right behind her, and if she opened her eyes she would lose her sanity.

"You're impossibly tall. Your skin is pale white and lukewarm. Sometimes you scare people like—like you're a rabid zombie clown trying to eat brains. You never talk or speak to anyone. You don't go out in public." Sera gasped in a frantic breath. "I know who you are," she said into the earth, her voice trembling. A laugh, ringing out into the forest.

_Say it. Out loud._

She felt the temptation to look up writhing through her mind, twisting it with cold, hard fingers. She shivered in fear and cold, raising her eyes slowly upward. She inhaled, exhaled, and slowly, shakingly removed her the arms from her head.

Another breath.

"Slenderman."

Silence. Disbelieving, incredulous silence. The probing sensation in her skull stopped. More silence.

Still more silence.

Finally, the painful grip returned to her ankle. She felt herself being dragged along the floor, and she grabbed roots to stop herself from being pulled. Pain crawled up her leg, and she was ripped from her desperate grip. Frigid dark began to suck at her as he dragged her into a deep pit that led into more darkness, and she made a last, desperate attempt to free herself from his grasp. Her hands clawed at the snow and dirt before her, and she blindly kicked at him. A gust of snowy wind blew her fingertips barely hanging on the rim.

"Help," she shouted to anyone that would hear. She felt like a hand was burning a mark permanently into her leg, and she whimpered in pain.

Her fingers slipped from the edge of the pit.

Blackness completely swallowed her, her hands the last thing visible as she faded into the darkness.


	8. I Can't Save Everyone

Jack wandered the halls of the house, searching for the room Sera had been staying in. He gently opened the door of the room adjacent to Sophie's, peering in carefully. Jamie's room. He was still sleeping in bed, but would no doubt wake up early in anticipation for the eggs that would soon be delivered. He began to close the door, pressed for time, but his attention was caught by the small sprite hammering her tiny fists against Jamie's window with small, plinking noises every time her hand hit the window.

_Baby-tooth?_

Looking left, then right, he cautiously entered the room, wincing as his feet creaked against the floorboards. He lifted a hairsbreadth off of the ground, making his way over to the window. Glancing over his shoulder at Jamie, he carefully opened the window, immediately letting in the sound of frantic, unintelligible chirping.

"Baby-tooth. Baby-tooth!" he whispered over her agitated meeping. "Calm down. What's going on? Where's Sera?"

Still speaking in a language only Tooth and her other fairies knew, Baby-tooth began to mime someone crossing his or her arms and leaning against something with a cocky expression on his or her face. He assumed that was Sera. She then fluttered over to the other side of the window and mimed a hunchbacked creeper with clawed hands and a scary-snarly face. Switching back to her leaning position, she slapped her hands to her face in horror and held the back of her hand to her forehead before moving her arms and legs back and forth in a running motion. She flew over once again to the opposite side of the window and laughed maniacally, evilly rubbing her hands together and reaching over to the spot she was just in with wriggling fingers. Finally, she once again resumed her original spot and clutched her throat while gasping for air, shot herself in the head, crawled against the windowsill towards him with a hand extended in appeal, and supposedly passed out.

Jack stared at her while she sat up and stared back, slowly pointing in the direction they had come from. He dragged his gaze towards where she was pointing at, the gears in his mind turning, and suddenly he was crouching on the windowsill with Baby-tooth safely nestled on his shoulder. It creaked as he leapt off of it, wind whipping his white hair back as he flew towards the forest again. He still didn't know what the hell had happened to Sera, but Baby-tooth's charade was sufficient enough to send him into I'm-going-to-fuck-shit-up mode. In less than a minute he was weaving through the trunks of the forest again, scanning for any trace of her.

"Do you know where you last saw her?" he asked Baby-tooth. She chewed her lip in hesitation, finally pointing out a path for him to take. He shot forward, landing on scattered snow after a few moments and taking a few steps before coming to a stop. Small, still flexible roots were half-ripped out of the ground, footsteps lay in haphazard evidence to the fight she had put up. Twigs were snapped, their brittle, frosty selves strewn around a trail of disturbed snow that led to a dark, menacing pit in the ground. There was no life here, no tenacious grasses that dared to approach it, no hardy birds or chittering squirrels to accompany the lonely howling of the wind.

"This wasn't here before," he said, moving to stand on the edge of the hole. Snow fell in at his disturbance, fading away into the pitch black abyss. "Sera!" he shouted. It echoed deep into the pit, with no response. He hefted up a rock and threw it inside. He counted fifteen seconds before the sound of the rock hitting the bottom traveled back up to his ears. Glancing at Baby-tooth on his shoulder, she nodded at him and pointed down at the hole. His eyes narrowed. So be it.

He jumped in.

Immediately the sound of the wind was cut out. There was nothing except dark, dark, and more dark. He dropped for a few seconds before he slowed his fall, floating downwards. Eventually, he flinched as his bare feet touched cold, wet stone. He was deprived of nearly all of his senses, with only the sound of his own breathing interrupting the silence. Holding his staff up, the shepherd's crook at the end flickered briefly before emitting a solid, silvery-blue glow. Meeting Baby-tooth's fearful gaze, he looked towards the cave-like tunnel before them and flew forward.

Light. A weak, unstable light, but light none the less. His own guttered out as they neared it, and he slowly crept forward on his feet, silently coming to the mouth of the cave after several minutes of walking.

His jaw dropped momentarily.

They had come across what could only be described as an underground palace. Twirling spires made out of grey marble embraced the stalactites above, with arching, delicate bridges and spiraling staircases wrapping around dusty chandeliers and ancient spiderwebs. Antique sconces lit up the full extent of both the architectural beauty and the horror that lived in it. Hundreds of cages wrought of rusted iron hung next to these chandeliers, some full of despondent fairies, others completely devoid of inhabitants. Baby-tooth stifled a horrified gasp as Jack flew closer. He winced at the creaking of the cage as he landed on one, the fairies around him suddenly chirping in excitement.

"Shh," he started to say, but he was interrupted by a voice he felt like he knew so well, but couldn't place his finger on.

_Jack?_

His head shot up, his gaze pulled towards the giant mounds of glittering, golden tubes that had been at Tooth's palace before Pitch had raided it. His eyes widened. His teeth. His _memories._

Another voice interrupted his thoughts, this time belonging to Pitch himself. He started violently, but he wasn't addressing him. Looking down, he saw him way, way below, pacing back and forth.

"Will you _stop _calling me that, you annoying little wretch of an insignificant, _stupid _adolescent? I am _not _this silly little mainstream figure of yours. I am Pitch Black, the Boogeyman! The very embodiment of fear and darkness himself!" He was yelling by this point, his rage directed at the upside-down form of Sera, who was hanging from an arch via a long chain wrapped around her ankles.

"Sheesh, Slendy, calm down," Sera said, her arms and hair dangling as she lazily swung back and forth. "I can see why you never had a face. They probably got annoyed of all your bitching and decided no mouth was the way to go. The robe is a nice improvement, though. Much less formal than the suit."

Pitch completely lost it, getting up close and personal to snarl in her face. She took the opportunity to grab his oily, black hair and headbutt him, almost immediately breaking out into a stream of cussing as he fell backwards. "Oh _shit,_ that only hurts the headbutt-ee in the movies, not the headbutt-er. Son of a bitch, I think I broke my nose." She sniffed and began prodding her nose as Pitch stood back up. Her poking was stopped by his hand reaching up and harshly gripping her throat.

"_You fool—"_

Baby-tooth screamed.

They had flown closer as soon as Pitch had started showing signs of possible bodily harm, and as Jack followed her gaze he realized that they had flown close enough to see the tiny corpses of fairies littering the floor. Some of them were a pair of wings, no more; others, a scattered limb or a smear of blood. It made him sick to look upon them, and Baby-tooth's horrified shrieking died down to a whimper as Pitch suddenly smiled beatifically.

"Jack Frost! Right on time! Glad you could make it. Sera here," he said, grinning as his hand tightened around her neck, "has been waiting for you to come join the party, hasn't she?" He broke off as Sera sunk her teeth into his hand, choking and sputtering when he stumbled away.

"Eww, when was the last time you washed your hands? That tasted _disgusting!" _As soon as she was out of immediate danger from Pitch, Jack pointed his staff at him and blasted him with a bolt of ice. Pitch flew back, his body vanishing into shadow the instant before he hit the floor. Jack alighted before her, freezing a section of the chain and swinging at it with his staff. He wrapped his arms around her as the chain broke, catching her and setting her safely on the floor.

"Sera! Are you alright?!" She gagged, dizzily staggering in his arms as the blood rushed from her head back down to her numb feet.

"Unless you've got a mint on yourself, I'm definitely _not _alright. It was like biting into a chunk of piss-soaked _ash_ slathered in too much mayonnaise and horse radish with a healthy dose of arsenic and a side of cucurbitacin." He laughed shakily, tightening his hold on her half in relief, half to prevent her from collapsing.

"I'm not going to ask how you know what that tastes like."

"Well, well, well." Pitch's voice echoed down to their ears from above, and they looked upwards. _"This _certainly is a surprise. When I guessed that Jack would immediately give into his rescue-the-damsel-in-distress gut reaction, I never _imagined _that there might be more to it than instinct." He laughed heartily, slapping his leg and pretending to wipe a tear from his eye. "Look at you two! How _adorable_. And now, I'm going to kill two lovebirds with one stone."

Sera was quick to verbally slap that smile off his face. "Oh no you di'in't!" she said, snapping her fingers in a Z-shape for every syllable. "Bitch, I will _fuck you up,"_ she said haughtily, adopting an absurd accent and barely avoiding breaking into a laugh.

"You might be unafraid to stand up to me," called Pitch, "and you'll pay for each of those insolent words. But I _know _what you're afraid of. I make it my business to know." Jack felt the touch of shadow engulf him, ripping him from Sera and Baby-tooth, and he suddenly found himself standing on a bridge opposite of Pitch. Sera was still where he had left her, fists on her hips and Baby-tooth flitting worriedly around her head.

"You're afraid of losing. You're afraid of losing _him._" Jack looked down at that, unable to read what was in her eyes from this distance. She looked back, her face for once expressionless. "You're afraid of losing this adventure, this sudden life that you've come to love. You're afraid of _going back home, _to your bills, your scholarship, your job as an insignificant and impoverished digital artist. You've never seriously felt this way about anyone before, never even _had_ anyone before. No one's ever loved poor little Seraphina as much as the Moon's Guardians. Little Seraphina's never known what it's like to have a true family. Poor, _pitiful_ little Sera."

That was enough.

Jack launched himself at Pitch, swinging his staff at him as a shout ripped itself from his throat. He parted through darkness, hitting the bridge he had been standing on and rolling up to his feet. He scanned around the spires wildly, finally spotting Pitch just behind Sera.

"_Sera!"_ She turned around too late. Pitch grabbed her, and she melted into blackness, leaving Baby-tooth suddenly alone as they reemerged on a staircase diagonal from him.

"And what's your dear, _special_ friend scared of, little Sera?" He gripped her face brutally in his taloned hand, wisely staying out of range of her teeth and restraining her clawing nails with his free arm around her this time. He forced her to look at Jack, and Jack tensed up, crouching against the bridge and ready to leap at him again. "What do you think? Hmm, sweet angel?" Sera gritted her teeth, her lips moving as she growled something that Jack couldn't hear. Pitch seemed to find this extremely funny.

"Of course he's scared of something, fool girl! I'll be lenient, this time; you're new to this, after all. It takes awhile to read one's fears, to learn how to best manipulate this mind. Handsome Jack here is afraid of few things. He's immortal, after all, and all thoughts of humans, all thoughts of _pain_ cease to occupy his time. Still, he has his monster under his bed, his sweat-induced nightmare. We all do, don't we?" Pitch regarded him thoughtfully, his slitted, yellow eyes speculative as Jack only tensed more. His knuckles were white where he gripped his staff.

"Jack," he finally said to Sera, looking at her with an almost theatrically tender expression, "is afraid of never finding his memories. Who he was before all this, before the Man in the Moon decided to tear him from whatever life he had before and place him in the almighty, legendary figure of Jack Frost. Your dear friend is afraid of never being believed in, never again finding someone who he can touch with his fingers, who his words will reach. He's afraid of _failure._ He's afraid that he'll fail North, Toothiana, and Bunnymund again. He's afraid that he'll fail the children of the world. He's afraid that he'll fail _you._ That you'll die just like Sandman, that he'll be too late again, too slow, too pathetically _weak _to save you. And then poor, misfortunate Jack Frost will be all alone again."

Pitch laughed.

Jack roared as he attacked him again, once more only parting through shadow. The laugh came from behind him, and he wasted no time shooting a mass of ice at him. Pitch easily sidestepped, and he would have leapt at him again except for the fact that he held Sera over the edge of the balcony, threatening to drop her with every single chuckle of his.

"_Pitch!" _he shouted. _"_You_ coward!"_

"Why don't we get rid of your fears, Jack? I'll give you your memories. I'll give you your disbelief. I'll give you your _failure."_ His laugh twisted viciously at the end, his face twisting into a fanged glare.

And then he released his grip on her.

_No._

He lunged for her, his hand extended. His fingers briefly brushed against the curve of her shoulder before a glint of gold was all the hint he got as the case holding his teeth slammed into him. Enhanced by Pitch's powers, the hurled tube easily pushed him aside, burying itself painfully in between his ribs. The breath was knocked from his lungs as he slammed into a wall, and he crumpled onto his knees as he fell down to a ledge. Chest heaving, he gasped for air, looking up to see Sera barely hanging on to a similar ledge instead of the mess of broken bones and blood he feared he would find. Baby-tooth was tugging at her fingers with a heroic, if ineffective effort to lift her up. He didn't have any time to catch his breath, to ease the dark bruise that was forming on his ribs. He lurched to his feet and rose into the air again.

Pitch let him get close enough to see the desperation on her face before he teleported him across the room again. He had to try again, had to save her. He couldn't fail again, not like this. He couldn't lose someone again. Flashbacks and echoes of Sandy played in his head as he attempted to reach her again and again, only to be pushed back by Pitch's taunting shadows. Each time he failed, her fingers slipped that tiny amount closer to her fall.

She was going to die.

"I grow weary of this game," Pitch shouted to him. "Let us end it." He moved forward, smiling at the look on Jack's face, and crushed her fingers under the heel of his boot.

She fell, a soft gasp of pain the last thing passing through her lips.

_No._

Seven feet of night obscured his view of her unavoidable death, and he hurled himself at Pitch with his vision tinted the icy white fire of rage and sorrow intermixed. His voice, his limbs were beasts unto themselves, striking blindly where his mind was too paralyzed with shock and the unwillingness to believe that she had died.

The fairies screamed from above.

The sound tore into his brain, distracting him. He looked past Pitch, and saw Sera. _Alive. _She had fallen at an angle that had spread the impact along the left side of her body, rolling to dispense excess energy, and while she had most likely fractured her arm in the process, she was _alive._ In pain, certainly, but alive.

Pitch's fist slammed into his face, taking advantage of his elated distraction. He staggered backwards, tearing his gaze away with an effort and spitting blood on the floor. He grimaced, wiping the blood from his mouth and breathing heavily as he ran a tongue over his teeth to make sure he still had them all. Stinging sweat ran down into his eyes, and he crouched once more, gripping his staff in both hands. He only had focus on beating the living shit out of Pitch, now that his attention was off of Sera for the moment.

"Just returning the favor," Pitch said, wringing out his hand. A large scythe extended from said hand, without warning slicing at his head. Jack ducked, a few strands of white hair drifting down as he blocked the scythe's return swing with his staff. A deep, cracking noise sounded at the collision, and Jack gritted his teeth at the sudden pain that wracked his body as though he had taken the blow himself, but his staff remained intact as Pitch pulled back.

Pitch brought his hands over his head, slamming the scythe deep into the spot where he had just been. Dust and rock exploded, and he jumped onto the rod, cold sand biting into his bare feet as he ran up the pole towards him. He vaulted overhead, flipping as he hooked Pitch's neck in the crook of his staff. Using his momentum to flip Pitch as well, he landed with soft knees, using the muscles of his legs to absorb impact and planting the base of his staff into Pitch's chest as he landed with much more force. He applied more pressure, hearing a cracking noise coming from his sternum, and he gritted his teeth as a blast of ice radiated forth, eliciting an ear-piercing scream of pain from Pitch. He pressed harder, deeper, and suddenly staggered as Pitch vanished.

"Very... very... Bravo!" Pitch rasped, from a short distance away clutching at his chest as the ice slowly receded into his onyx robe. "Your fighting skills... are impressive. I am... no match for you."

"You never were," Jack said coldly. "You use blood and death as weapons, and when that fails you cower behind fear and words." He stalked forth, power blazing from him like overcharged static, crackling the air near him. Where his bare feet touched stone, trails of ice spread outwards, enveloping the bridge in their cold embrace. "You use hostages and blackmail, secrets and bribery to poison and kill. You're _pathetic."_

"Ouch," Pitch chuckled breathlessly. "Alright, I deserve that. I do. But what do _you_ use as weapons, Jack? What are you even fighting for? The children? They could care less about you," he snarled. "No one will ever believe in you. You think that idiot of a girl cares for who you really are? All she wants is a handsome face, a nice body, and an easy path to feeling like she's important. She'll discard you as soon as she has what she wants." Jack's lips thinned as he badmouthed Sera. "The Guardians? They don't want you, Jack. No one does. They don't even _like _you, and you know it. You've seen the way they look at you, how they lift their pompous noses at your methods. They'll never understand you, and they'll _never _share their believers with you."

"_Shut up." _Jack lunged for him, cold radiating off of his staff and releasing a wave of frigid ice at Pitch. His fanged smile as he faded away told Jack that he had played exactly into Pitch's hands, and he stumbled as warm air suddenly embraced him as he fell forward. Eggshells crunched against the palms of his hands as he caught himself against soft grass, and he looked up.

Painted fragments of eggs littered the tunnel as far as he could see. His eyes widened at the destruction, at the sheer desolation. Slowly standing up, he stared down the hallway.

"No," he whispered. Then, he froze, as if something had suddenly struck him. He turned around, slamming his fists into the black wall behind him that he had fallen through. Pain shot up his arms as he slammed his fists into the wall again and again until they were covered in blood.

_Sera._

Was he screaming out loud? Over and over? Screaming, because it was better than the despair that lurked a hairsbreadth away?

Or was it only in his head?


	9. All Good Things

Jack sprinted down the tunnels, heading for the one that led to North America. Everywhere he looked, shards of colorful eggs littered the flora as far as the eye could see. Where his mind was a mess of half-formed panic and frozen, repressed emotion, his body responded instinctively to the adrenaline coursing through his veins. Eggs were crushed further under his feet, their sharp, stabbing pains the only reason why he didn't lift into the air.

They were the only things keeping him sane.

Inside the large passageway, more branched off, divided by country, by state. He hesitated long enough to register where he was going before continuing forward. The ground sloped steeply as he neared his destination, and he slid the rest of the way there. He emerged from the hole into a land of spring, so different from the darkness that he had just been trapped in. Sunlight filtered through the lush foliage of the oak trees, illuminating the disappointed faces of the children with their empty baskets, their sad words, their unwillingness to believe that Easter had failed to come this year. He came to a stop, gazing wildly around, and found Bunnymund hopeless, disconsolate. Bunnymund turned around to regard him with shocked eyes as another child simply passed through him with that familiar, transparent glow. He didn't say a word.

"Jack," North rasped from behind him. He turned around to face him, opening and closing his mouth at the same expression on his face. "Where were you? The nightmares attacked the tunnels. They... they smashed every egg, crushed every basket. _Nothing _made it to the surface."

"North, I—"

"Jack!" The flitting of wings interrupted him as Tooth came up next to North. She gasped, looking at the bruise forming on his face, the blood dripping from his hands and staining the grass under his feet. "What happened to you?" Her hands came to hide her mouth as she gasped again, looking at him with wide, fearful eyes. "Where did you get that?"

He followed her gaze to his left hand, where the golden case holding his memories treacherously announced its presence in his hand via the sparkles that shimmered off its metal form. He didn't even remember how it had got there, if he had picked it up or not. He dragged his gaze back up, meeting the assumptions, the accusations in their eyes.

"I... I was... It's..." If there was ever a moment he needed to clarify himself, it was now, with lives endangered and fingers pointed. And yet, the daze of the past few minutes, the unwillingness to accept petrifying his mind foiled his tongue. The sheer _guilt_ their words brought prevented him from speaking.

"Where's Baby-tooth? And Sera?" she asked, backing away from him and half-hiding behind North. "What have you done, Jack?"

"_That_ is why you weren't here? You were with _Pitch?!"_ North almost shouted. So quick to believe the worst of him, quick to judge, to condemn Jack Frost. Pitch's words came back to him, finding it easy to curl their manipulating tendrils into the shell-shocked state of his mind. How eager they were to believe that he was a traitor. How eager to believe that the only reason he was there was for his teeth.

And what was his reason? To snatch Sera out of his clawing grip? How much of that was the selfish desire to find his teeth? He remembered the longing that had easily distracted him when he heard that voice calling his name. The case was silent, for now, but he could feel its temptation enticing him to pry it open, to find out who he had been. He shook his head briefly to clear his thoughts.

"No, listen, _listen." _Jack slid the case into his sweatshirt's pocket and extended a scraped hand in appeal. "I'm _sorry._ I didn't mean for this to happen. But, look, I need you guys' help. They're—"

"He has to go." Bunnymund's voice was raw with barely suppressed pain, his eyes cold and unfeeling. He leaned over Jack, stabbing a finger at his chest.

"What—"

"_We should never have trusted you."_ His paw bunched up into a fist. He could see the struggle behind his eyes as Jack backed away, desperate to hit him. And yet the blow never came as his chest heaved, his fist dropping to his side. Bunnymund turned his back to him the instant before his expression crumpled. "Easter is... new life," he said to him as he began to walk away. "Easter is about _hope,_ and now it's gone." Bunnymund paused, looking at him over his shoulder with a heavy sigh, before further moving away. He felt the others begin to peel off as well, Tooth and North retreating with heavy hearts. There was no compassion, no understanding, no solace in their horrified gazes welling with tears, and Jack clenched his fists, desperately repressing the same sadness that came to his eyes.

He wanted nothing more than to shut the world out, to do whatever it took to end this tearing feeling that stabbed his chest, and so he accepted their retreat. He did more than accept. He _reciprocated_. The feeling of pain, of guilt, of shame and misery and hopelessness engulfed his entire body in its cold grip, and he felt brittle, glacial crystal wrap itself around him. His inclination to simply _cease_ spawned a roping tide of energy that consumed his form in response to his anguish. Ice bit at his form, frigid enough to distract him. Opening his eyes, he saw a completely different world.

Arctic tundra and cold desert had replaced the spring flowers, the swaying branches and curling roots devoid of eggs. He squinted at what little sunlight managed to reflect brilliantly off of the sheets of ice, at the cutting wind with distant, unfocused eyes.

This power, this intuitive release of a large amount of energy every time he was overwhelmed with emotion. Why its connection to his instincts? Why, whenever he was consumed with rage or sorrow, did it only then express itself? Only his desires, not his consciousness, could control it, and it seemed as though it would be more hindrance then help if he didn't learn how to. He didn't have time for this, to wallow in his woes when Sera and Baby-tooth were still trapped in Pitch's lair, alone with him and the thousands of either dead or half dead fairies. To pop up in, what, _Antarctica_, much less wonder why he had suddenly teleported across the planet for the first time in three-hundred years.

And what _had _prompted this release? Why, now, after three-hundred years, was he only beginning to realize what he was capable of, both as a human being and as Jack Frost? Was it that he had learned to suppress his emotions in times of crisis? Gone into lock-down mode and continued almost a robot? Prevented his mind from sheer _feeling?_ Was it that his sudden induction into the Guardians had unlocked some blocked off potential? That only now, after centuries of superficial times of nothing but fun and trivial amusements, he was beginning to feel pain and tenderness and what it meant to be human?

Or was it the sudden existence of belief he had never felt before giving him this before unknown strength? He had seen what belief—and the lack thereof—had done to Tooth. Her iridescence had darkened, her wings had slowed until they had started their nightly patrol for the collection of teeth. What would the loss of this year's Easter do to Bunnymund? Would he become weak, his bones old and brittle, with what little good-temper he showed further dissipating into tiredness and hopelessness? Jack had lived since his awakening without the attention, the faith that he craved, and consequently he was the hardiest of the Guardians when it came to surviving without the belief that sustained them. So was Sera responsible for this increase in potential? The fact that she was the only human on the planet who could see him? The fact that her snarky jokes, her very presence generally put him in a better mood?

Was she—and her belief in him—to blame?

It didn't matter, in the end. A radioactive spider could have bit him, and it still wouldn't matter. At that very moment, Pitch was out there, somewhere below the surface in that deep, dark, subterranean palace of his, possibly reducing her to that same smear of blood that he had to hundreds of the trapped fairies in his lair. He didn't think that Pitch would kill her outright, not without using her as leverage against the great Jack Frost, but there were things that were worse than death. It made his skin crawl to think about it.

He had wasted enough time already. So what if the Guardians had jumped to conclusions? So what if they thought he was a self-absorbed traitor? He was beginning to realize that maybe he was a bit more human than he had originally thought, with all their flaws, their mortalities, their hope and their persistence. To be human was to live, laugh, and love regardless of imperfections, things he might have once known before he had opened his eyes to the glacial waters of that lake from which he had emerged. Maybe he had made mistakes. Maybe he was too flippant for his own good. Maybe the loss of Easter had created a void in which the hopes of all the children of the world had been sucked into, but he still had his. Easily snuffed out at the careless breath of a sleeping girl, but still _alive._ It was fragile, a hairsbreadth from the edge of a cliff, a thread's burden over a bottomless abyss.

But it was still hope.

He gazed at the shadow of the moon, grasping his staff with a grip he had to force to relax. He tried to communicate with that part of himself that had that power, that potential, tried to summon it, to warp it to his will. He silently beseeched the Man in the Moon to grant him understanding and control over it. But the Man in the Moon had never spoke to him, never responded to his varying levels of pain and frustration, and he didn't really expect an answer this time.

He never had.

So be it. Not being able to slap Manny on the back and sneak in a wheedling ploy for assistance in being magically teleported to wherever the hell Pitch was certainly complicated things, but he didn't need him. Sooner or later, Pitch would come out of hiding with his next plot, and Jack would find him. He would seek the Guardians' help again, convince them that they were wrong about him. Fly around the globe, carve tunnels through every inch of the earth if he had to. For varying reasons, the current foremost of which was Sera's safety, he would do whatever it took to stop Pitch.

He just had one thing to do left.

His hand grasped the softly gleaming gold that cradled his teeth, withdrawing it from the pocket of his sweatshirt. His arm arched, ready to hurl it towards the horizon, and yet he hesitated to take that very last step in ridding himself of the case. How long he had yearned for these, yearned to know about the life he had before all of this. Was he a beggar, a commoner, a king? Did he have a mother, a father like everyone else did? Did he have friends? Siblings? Hobbies? Romantic pursuits? Was he a mischievous rake, an irrepressibly humorous flirt? A polite gentleman? _Who _had he been before he was Jack Frost? These questions had always lurked at the back of his mind ever since he had walked through that town and realized that no one could see, hear, or touch him. And now, he had that opportunity to find out.

Only now, he wasn't sure he wanted to.

Were the Guardians right when they believed that his desire for his memories was driving him to horrible lengths to obtain them? He remembered that voice, that fragment, that wisp, that strand of evanescent smoke calling out for his voice, looking, _searching _for him. If Sera hadn't been dragged into that damned pit, would he have still heard its siren call, still went down there in search of it? Maybe, maybe not. Maybe they were wrong. He closed his eyes, bringing his arm forward, and yet he found that it slowed at the zenith of its throw, that it wouldn't release the tube. He sighed, momentarily frowning, and he slowly looked down at the case in his hand with a pained look before sliding it into his pocket once more.

He may not have had time for this distraction, this indecision, but he couldn't do it.

A puff of black sand and a scream behind him caught his attention. His blood ran cold as he immediately turned around, holding his staff defensively and crouching slightly for easy maneuvering. His alarm largely seemed to be unneeded as he took in the sight before him with a confusion that prompted him to straighten and question his sanity.

Pitch face down in a scattering of black sand dotting the hardened ice was testament to Sera's flailing limbs and startled scream. He stared at them, alternating his dumbfounded gaze between Pitch's sprawled form and her spazzing out. Finally, he found words to express his incredulity.

"What the f—"

"_Jacket,"_ Sera shouted, throwing herself at him. _"Off. Now." _Before he could process what was happening, he found himself suddenly shirtless while she huddled inside his too-large sweatshirt. Baby-tooth fluttered weakly into the hood, disappearing somewhere to shiver inside its depths. Jack glanced at Pitch to see if he was as befuddled as he was.

"You _fool—" _Pitch's outraged insult was interrupted by Sera abruptly ripping the black robe from his body and wrapping it around her form convulsing in cold. Under it, he was au naturel, with his once again sprawled form granting him some degree of modesty.

"Huh," she noted through teeth chattering so hard he could barely make out what she was saying. "You make a better Taylor Lautner than he does. I'd take the pants too, but I know you don't wear boxers either."

"And how would you know that?" he finally managed, wondering in some nonplussed part of his mind if he succeeded in sounding like having himself suddenly divested of half of his clothing was completely normal.

"Remember when you got knocked out after, um... Sandy? Yeah," she chuckled slightly through clenched teeth. "North and Bunny thought it would be funny to leave Tooth, Baby-tooth, and me to take care of your wounds. Heh."

Pitch saved him from having to respond to that by lunging for Sera's throat with grasping hands and a furious roar. Sera let out a strangled scream and jumped behind Jack, reaching over his hand and tilting the staff towards Pitch. A spontaneous beam of snow smacked into him in a spot any male would sympathize with, and he blinked for a moment before falling to the ground in choked-off pain.

"At least the important bits are covered now," she remarked over his shoulder after watching Pitch writhe in agony against the ice for awhile.

"Please, _please _give him back his clothes." Jack pinched the bridge of his nose, wondering how he could have ever thought that Sera would need rescuing from the Boogeyman.

"But I'm cold," she complained. "It's not every day I get to frolic in subzero temperatures in jeans and and a shirt. Fine, fine, I'll give it back, but only because it smells like something curled up and died on it. Just know, if I turn into an ice cube a few seconds before I would have if I was wearing that dress of his, it's your fault. I suppose you want your sweatshirt back, too?" Jack looked over his shoulder, eyeing her out of his peripherals. He shook his head after a moment in wry amusement.

"Keep it, until we get you out of here at least. It looks good on you."

"Aww, you just like bragging about the fact that you can't, oh, I don't know, _freeze _to death. And being shirtless."

"You caught me," he said, his voice dryly sarcastic as he threw his hands up in surrender.

By this time, Pitch had recovered sufficiently enough to put his robe back on and stand with some measure of dignity. His eyes were slitted in loathing for the twat standing behind Jack, rage boiling the air around him. He opened his mouth to spew words of vehement hatred as he extended a hand towards them. Not waiting to see what he was going to do, Sera panicked and grabbed Jack's hand again, tilting his staff upwards. A snow-cone-looking shape appeared in Pitch's hand, at which the Boogeyman blinked at once more.

"There," Sera said. "Make sure you check for microphone feedback and clear out your throat before starting another dramatic speech again. If you need some water, I'm sure Jack could poof some more snow up for you." Pitch proceeded to make said dramatic speech, practically spitting at her.

"You _stupid _idiot! You _annoying_ twit! You _simpleton_ of a girl, _you_ _brainless_ _piece_ _of_ _worthlessness!_ You are the most _annoying_ and _foolish_ person in your _entire_ species!" Jack tensed as Pitch threw the snow cone on the ground while continuing to rant, continuously coming up with even more inventive insults as he progressed. Sera's hand on his forearm made him pause and glance at her as she held a finger to his lips.

"Let him have his moment," she whispered in his ear. "You know how he loves his dramatic speeches." He rolled his eyes while keeping a careful and somewhat bemused eye on Pitch. Finally wrapping up his performance with a few vows of eternal suffering and all that good stuff, Pitch lunged at Sera once more.

"Can I hit him now?" Jack asked of her while keeping himself in between them.

"Please do."

Jack swung at him with his staff baseball-style, hurling a jagged sweep of bladed ice that met only a small spray of sand as Pitch sidestepped to avoid it. He leapt overhead, sliding to a stop on bare feet and swinging the same shards of misty ice at him. Pitch swept his arm, consuming them in black smoke and hurling a tide of shadowy sand at him with both hands, which he rolled to the side to dodge. Again, this time with a grunt as dark fire raced towards Jack unleashing an explosion of blue, frigid crystal from the air with a downward slice of his staff. The darkness dissipated as cold blasted through it towards Pitch. A mixture of ice, sand, smoke, and snow littered the air, blocking out the entire world as Jack landed to hunt for him on foot. He startled as he heard a laugh behind him, and turned warily around to the sound of derisive clapping.

"Magnificent, Jack. Truly, a feat that could only be accomplished by the both of us." Pitch nodded at the large, curling, fragmented tendrils of ice tipped with steaming darkness. "Think of what we could do, Jack! What goes together better than cold," he said, gesturing at him, then at himself, "and dark? Imagine it! The good ol' days, back again! Ruling the world, filling it with Pitch Black—"

"—And Jack Frost," he finished for him, staring at him through narrowed eyes.

"_Exactly._ Both of us will be believed in—"

"The last time I checked, 'believe' wasn't synonymous with 'fear'," Sera said from a few yards behind Jack. The smoke cleared out, revealing a solid black ten rating shakily written with a Sharpie marker on a notepad borrowed from North's workshop in her hand.

"And that's _not_ what I want." Jack shook his head slightly as if to clear it from Pitch's tempting, venomous manipulations. "Go home, Pitch, before you bite off more than you can chew." He turned his back to him, moving towards Sera. Maybe Pitch didn't deserve the easy way out, but he felt like he had to prove to him that he was nothing like him. If their situations were switched, he knew Pitch would have killed him then and there without showing any pity or mercy. From behind, Pitch laughed again.

"Very well. You want to be left alone? Done. Have it your way, Jack. But first, I'll make you a deal you can't refuse."

Jack realized what he was going to do the instant before he appeared behind Sera in a scatter of sand. He pointed his staff at him, baring his teeth as Pitch grasped her hood and tore it from her head, reaching in with cruel fingers to rip the fairy curled in her hair.

"The staff, Jack," he snarled. "You have a bad habit of interfering. Give me the staff, and I'll let her go. Both of them," he added as an afterthought as he reached over to wrap his arm around Sera. Baby-tooth shook her head while chirping frantically at Jack while Sera threatened to draw on his face with her Sharpie if he didn't let them go. Her notebook and Sharpie promptly exploded into a cloud of sand, and she sighed after a moment. _"Give it to me," _he hissed, tightening his grip on Baby-tooth and sending a slowly moving mass of dark sand up Sera's arms. They saw the indecision on his face, the hopelessness that slowly replaced ferocity, creating a smile on Pitch's face and causing Baby-tooth's protests to die down to frightened squeaks.

"Jack, you sure as hell are _not _going to give that motherfucker—" That was as far as Sera got before Pitch gagged her with a band of shadow, efficiently silencing her. The wind howled around them as he clenched his staff so hard his knuckles turned white. He didn't have a choice.

He gave Pitch the staff.

Almost immediately it turned to onyx as Pitch let go of Baby-tooth to catch it. He inhaled loudly, roots of darkness spreading from where it touched the ground to curl around his and Sera's feet while Baby-tooth fluttered over to Jack for safety.

"Alright," Jack said warily, the way he might talk to a starving shark. "You have it. Now give her back." Pitch simply looked at him with that lofty, smug smile, a look that send a chill down his spine.

"No."

He vanished, causing Jack to panic for a moment before he located them again, standing on the edge of a cliff that tumbled into snowy darkness.

"You said you didn't want what I offered. A partnership, a family, more belief than a pitiful soul like you could ever hope for. You want to be alone? So _be _alone," he shouted. The shadows abruptly withdrew themselves from their crawling path on her body. She had but a moment to gasp for air before he threw her off down into the abyss.

"_Sera!" _

Pitch smiled again, malevolently as Jack sprinted towards him. He grasped the staff in both hands just as Jack had almost reached him, and brought it over his knee.

The staff broke in half.

Pain forced itself out of his throat in a sound he couldn't control. How did one describe what it felt like to have _oneself _break in half? It felt like every single bone in his body broke at that instant, like his guts were cut out and strung on a rope, like agony was the base of his blood, coursing through every vein, every artery. He stopped mid-stride, collapsing with his arms tight around his core as if he could somehow stop the pain with that simple action, as if that was the only thing keeping him alive and together. He was given no respite as Pitch blasted a bolt of sand into him, wracking his body further as he slammed into the wall of the crevice and fell to the unforgiving ice below. He gritted his teeth together to stop the horrible sound, clenching his fists and arching his back. A trailing laugh accompanied the pieces of his staff that clattered to the ground next to him, and then Pitch was gone.

He was alone.

Eventually the agony released its brutal grip on him, fading away in pulses and waves. When he opened his eyes again, he was greeted by a splash of blood vibrant against the white ice and the sound of incessant chirping. He groaned and followed its brief trail which led to Baby-tooth meeping in a frenzy over a crumpled, broken form.

Sera.

_No._

He forced himself to overcome the deep ache setting into his body, dragging himself over to them. Where his immortality had let him survive the fall, her human body hadn't. Only the near-silent murmurs coming from lips blue with cold showed she was still alive. She was soothing Baby-tooth's sobs, her voice soft and nonexistent at times. Her eyes, the only trace of green in this arctic wasteland, were rimmed by tired, purple bruises under them. They opened and found his as he came close, her lips curving up slightly as thin trails of blood dripped down cheeks hollowed from lack of sleep.

"Well, I guess I won't be freezing to death," she said faintly, a small chuckle disturbing her shivering form. "Bleeding out is just as good."

"Sera—" Was that voice choked with tears, that pained rasp him? Is that what he sounded like?

"Let me have my moment, Jack. I always wanted to go out in flames, but I don't really have time for the melodramatic soliloquy." How could she joke at this, when her lifeblood was pooling on the ice, a horrible crimson against the stark white? When her bones were snapped in odd angles, breaking the skin at places? When it felt like he was about to be ripped in half again? She continued, her voice getting progressively softer.

"Which is kind of unfair, because Pitch..." The rest she muttered to herself, her head lolling towards him. "Anyways, I'll skip the you-better-not-go-emo-on-me-or-else part and skip straight away to the don't-blame-yourself-yada-yada-important-stuff part. So, yeah," she whispered, suppressing a cough. "Don't blame yourself, capisce?"

"Sera, oh God. I—"

"Now for the touching anecdote part," she said, continuing over his tortured words. Which was probably a good thing, because he was so close to breaking down he didn't know what would happen if he thought of anything beyond _now._ "If I could do one thing over again, could do one more thing before I kick the bucket, know what it would be? Know what my one regret that has haunted me for my entire life and will continue to haunt me is?"

Jack looked at her, gently propping her head against his knees with Baby-tooth, now quiet, sitting on her shoulder. Water dripped from his cheek and crystallized on hers, which he stoically ignored. Her voice was so soft that he had to strain to hear.

"Dying a virgin."

She burst into laughter, agony wracking her body as she desperately tried to stop it. "Oh my God," she gasped, "you should see the look on your face. I'm kidding, I'm kidding! What I _really _wanted to do was troll someone right before I died. I should get a spot in the _Troll Hall of Fame_ for that." He swore under his breath, so emotionally drained that he couldn't laugh.

"I'm glad you're having fun," he snapped, his voice cracking. Her amusement died out, and she regarded him with that sad little smile.

"I... sorry..." she breathed. "Next is... the part... where I thank you... for being..." He propped her head up with his hand, leaning close to her as her voice almost completely gave away while his other hand brushed her tears of pain and his of grief away from her face.

"Oh, _fuck_ it."

With the last of her strength, she reached up with her one hand that was still functional and curled it around the nape of his neck, entwining her bloodied fingers in his snowy hair and pulling him close.

And instead of trolling consuming her last breath, it was he who she graced with that last ember of life as she kissed him.


	10. Don't Mess with Jack Frost

Above, the wind's howl was reduced to a whisper as deep in the chasm silenced reigned. Jack leaned against the icy wall splattered with blood, his head resting on it the way Sera's rested on his lap with fingers, once curled around his neck, now loosely entwined in his. His blue eyes were closed, giving him an almost peaceful countenance, and his relaxed body was crusted over with frost that cracked at every breath prompting the rise and fall of his bare chest. The only sense of urgency that prevented him from slipping into a coma for the rest of his life was the knowledge that if he didn't do something, the sheer cold would soon cause Baby-tooth to follow her.

And he would be alone.

That little fey speck in her, that smattering of the otherworldly that Sera lacked had kept her alive for this long, but it was only a matter of time before her wings stopped their fluttering and her small form curled up in death. He would have gladly stayed in this position until the unacknowledged tears stopped seeping from his eyes and the moon stopped spinning overhead, but he couldn't bear having the little sprite die as well. She was the only other person who had been there for Sera as she lay dying, the only other being to have suffered what she went through, to have witnessed firsthand what had happened this day and to have been a companion, a friend in this cruel game the Man in the Moon masterfully played.

And so he opened his eyes, ice clinging to his lashes, willing to come alive for her where he wouldn't for himself. He forced himself to look upon the blood frozen to the ground and their bodies, the bones mangled and broken and the unmoving form of Sera. Where once soft, flushed skin thrummed with the promise of life now existed a tranquil face pinched blue with the cold and ice. Where once a covert smile and conspiring eyes planned mischief now lurked unspoken sorrows and what-might-have-beens vaguely hinting at possibilities only beginning to make themselves known. He swallowed past the lump, the fiery rawness in his throat, tightening his grip on her lifeless hand, and looked past the horror.

Baby-tooth had seated herself on his wrist, her tiny hand resting on the side of his thumb. Her head was drooped and her wings were still as quiet, chirping sobs occasionally shuddered through her body.

"You alright?" he was able to rasp as he flexed his hand to let her know that he was back from that dark, dark—yet strangely peaceful—place his mind had been. Baby-tooth perked up and looked at him, her magenta eyes dark with unashamed tears as she abruptly sneezed. "Don't worry, we'll get you out of here. Everything is going... to be..." He couldn't finish that, couldn't lie to both himself and Baby-tooth. Nothing would ever be fine, from now on. He had a feeling that it would simply _be._ He'd spend the rest of eternity with some part of him broken. Maybe he'd be happy again, as unfathomable as that seemed, but he would never be quite whole again. Some part of him, some part that had begun to absorb some of Sera's human quirks had died with her. Some part of him that her kiss—which had probably been a product of her desire to troll him, her unorthodox friendship with him, and her I'm-about-to-die-so-why-the-fuck-not recklessness more than anything else—had touched was gone, never to be found again.

But he would go on, if only for the amount of time it took to get Baby-tooth to safety. Then he would be free to crawl into whatever was the closest state to death he could achieve. It wasn't just her death that made him feel this way—though that was admittedly a large part of it—but the guilt knowing that he had failed again, just like he had failed Sandy. He knew that eventually it would pass; after all, nothing between him and a human would have lasted anyways. More believers would replace her, if Bunnymund had been speaking the truth. In a thousand years from now, she would have been nothing but a fond memory. Maybe he would forget her. Maybe this failure would scab and scar over. Maybe he would heal, find new friends.

And maybe he would be left with this hollow feeling for the rest of his life.

Baby-tooth withdrew her hand eventually, floating up to curl in his hair for what little warmth he could provide. He stayed like that for awhile before he gently lifted Sera off of his lap and laid her out as neatly as he could without jarring any of her broken bones. Turning his gaze from her, he sought out the two broken pieces of his staff. Every inch of his body protested as he reached for them as though his entire skin was one massive bruise, and he had to pause to catch his breath once he had them. For a moment, all he did was look at the fractured pieces of wood resting in the palms of his hands and breathed. Without this staff, he was nothing. Nothing but a three-hundred and eighteen year old teenager with too much weight on his shoulders and no one—no one _alive—_who believed in him. He curled his fingers smeared with her blood around the staff and fitted the two pieces together.

Nothing happened.

Jack tightened his grip, pushing them together with a force that caused the wood to tremble. He gritted his teeth as the staff bit into his calloused palms, his knuckles whitening.

"Come on," he muttered under his breath, closing his eyes as he tried again. Where was his power now, when he needed it?

When he opened his eyes, still nothing had happened.

His shoulders slumped, his fist loosened as the pieces of his staff dropped to his side. That was it. That was all he could do. He hadn't been able to save Sera, and now Baby-tooth was going to die too, all for the want of a hot-glue gun.

He was useless.

Soft hands against his eyebrows distracted him, and as he looked up Baby-tooth patted his forehead from her upside-down hanging position in his hair. He saw the realization in her eyes, the acceptance and the knowledge that she herself would soon follow Sera, and yet she was comforting _him _the way that Sera had comforted her. He understood the words in her eyes well enough, having seen them mirrored in green barely a few minutes ago. She was telling him not to give up, not to blame himself, that everything would somehow be alright despite her impending death. He pulled her off of his head, cradling her in his cupped hands as he bowed his head and closed his eyes once more. There was nothing he could do about it.

Delicate wings briefly tickling his fingertips caught his attention, and he followed Baby-tooth's progress as she stumbled over to Sera. Darting into the pocket of his sweatshirt, she pushed out the forgotten tube that held his teeth. He slowly raised his head as she shoved it into his left hand, forcing him to curl his fingers around it with insistent hands. She excitedly perched on his thigh, looking up at him encouragingly. He sighed, lifting the case up to where it sparkled in what little light made it to the bottom of the crevice. What did he have to lose, that he hadn't lost already or would inevitably lose? He placed his fingers where Baby-tooth guided them, feeling the smooth surface with tentative fingers.

His vision exploded into a haze of diamonds.

_Jack._

He saw himself as he was three hundred years ago in third person, he with the laughing eyes of tawny caramel and the mess of russet hair. Himself, once hunting for Easter eggs as a normal human, now scaling trees like it was second-nature, now laughing with friends and family. Now playing with a girl half his height—his _sister—_in the forests, running, hiding, skating on a frozen pond. He watched them numbly as his younger self soothed his frightened sister with that carefree smile that seemed so impossible now. Watched as he got her out of danger, only to fall through the ice.

Watched as he closed his eyes a human and opened them as Jack Frost.

He had a sister. The blur receded from his vision, leaving him to stare with unfocused eyes at Baby-tooth's curious ones. He had had a sister. A sister, one that he might have seen, might have walked through on that very day he had realized the villagers couldn't see him. While what memories he had picked up right as he emerged from the lake, he couldn't recall if he had seen her there. She was nothing but a wisp of tantalizing smoke, an echoing laugh and an ethereal voice.

A memory.

"Is this some sort of joke?" he whispered, his voice growing as his hand tightened around the case. "You chose me because I _saved her?"_ Bile rose in his throat. How fucking ironic was _that,_ when Sera was broken and bloody beside him? He stood up, ignoring Baby-tooth's meeping while he cricked his neck and looked up at the moon framed by the rising cliffs that trapped them.

"So what?!" he shouted upwards, beyond reason. "Why am _I _special? Why me, just because I took my sister's place? Why not a policeman or a fireman or the millions of others who would do just the same? Who _do _do the same?" He flung a hand behind him as if to gesture at Sera, chest heaving as he yelled at the moon like a madman. "Why not _her? _She would have given up her life for that _stupid _staff. She died for _me." _He stared up at the moon, his fists clenched by his sides with the case still in his grip as he waited for a response. Waited for some whisper, some shimmer that showed that the Man in the Moon had heard him.

As always, there was nothing.

"_Why can't you bring her back?"_

He closed his eyes, falling to his knees as he ripped his gaze away and bowed his head once more. The case dropped to the ground with a distinct clink, rolling away and coming to a stop at Sera's lifeless fingertips. He was doomed to be here, to scream and rave and weep here, alone, for the rest of eternity with only frozen corpses as his companions. And without the moon's help in fixing his staff, that was how it would be. He stared down at his hands curled in his lap as his vision blurred, this time simply with tears. A shiver ran through his body as he gritted his teeth to hold back whatever sounds might betray them.

He stayed like that, the very picture of despondent hopelessness, unwilling to look up and witness Baby-tooth's slow death.

His staff rolled over to him, bumping his leg and causing him to look up. Baby-tooth smiled sadly at him, patting the wood with her hands. He picked it up, noting robotically that, while it wobbled in his hands, it didn't separate into two. Looking at where it fractured in the middle, Jack noticed a single pink Hello-Kitty band-aid was keeping the rod together.

He felt like crying.

"Where did you get that?" he whispered. Baby-tooth looked at him with eyes glistening in the faint light, hooking an infinitesimally small thumb over her shoulder. He held out a hand for her, lifting her to his bare shoulder and tilting his head fondly. Sera must have been carrying a spare on her person.

He sighed.

Holding the staff in both hands again, he gently pressed them together once more. He reached for that part inside of him, that power that would only respond to his instincts. Let his mind relax, even as his eyes closed once more and his brow furrowed. Wherever and whatever his center, his _core_ was, he reached for it. There was no man on both the moon or this planet who would help him.

There was only himself.

_Please._

Blue light flickered around the cracks, sending bright reflections bouncing through the chasm and lighting up the walls with their incandescent glow. Baby-tooth's excitement accompanied the sound of the wood mending together, the eerily glowing ice that spread along its whorls and gnarls before crawling up his arms and on the floor. He felt oddly _warm _again, as though a great fire—or ice—had seared through his body and made him feel comfortable in his skin again.

Except for that stabbing pain, that emptiness in his chest, he was whole once more.

He exhaled loudly, his breath releasing a cloud of icy tendrils that evaporated into the air. The aches of his body vanished, soothed by the return of his strength, of his power. The light receded from the staff, absorbed into his palms, and when his eyes opened they were of deep, deep ultramarine shot through with crackles of thrumming cyan and flecks of radiant silver. He stood up, his hair snapping as though a current had run through them, his skin flushed and revitalized.

He gazed at Sera as he bent to pick her up with his vision tinted a light blue at the edges. It was awkward carrying her and the staff at the same time, but her weight was a feather compared to the amount of power washing over him at the moment. What did he do, now? Where would he take her? Baby-tooth, he would take back to Tooth, no matter how much he didn't want to see the Guardians right now. He owed her that much. Sera, though? He couldn't take her to be... buried. No one would know who she was, and he couldn't just leave her in the middle of nowhere.

In the end, there was only one choice.

He let that power coalesce around them, causing Baby-tooth discomfort as they were encased in ice. It had always been his intention to have North take Sera back to wherever she called home. She wasn't his, never had been, and in the end she had always belonged to somewhere beyond that often misplaced snowglobe. There was no place for a human beside him; the only friends he was allowed to have without fear of eventual heartbreak were the cold and the wind.

When the ice pulled back and was reabsorbed into his skin, North's workshop loomed on the horizon. Baby-tooth's shivering increased, and he lifted into the air.

"Hold on," he muttered against the cutting wind. "Just a few more seconds and you'll be okay." His body protected Sera's broken form curled against his chest from the worst of it, and Baby-tooth huddled against his neck.

He landed with quiet feet at the front doors, which was an ornate affair with great, twirling pillars and garlands threaded with red ribbons. Taking a breath, he entered with a blast of ice where his hands were too occupied to open them. Inside, it was quiet. The temperature was a sauna compared to the arctic cold outside, and Baby-tooth immediately began to perk up. The doors slammed shut behind him, stirring a sleepy yeti from his post.

"Go find them." Jack moved past him, walking deeper into the workshop. He was reminded of how it was when Sandy had died, and, glancing at Sera, he thought it fitting. His feet navigated dark hallways he knew well, and he found the spot where they had memorialized Sandy. He found an empty alcove and laid Sera out the stone bench that occupied it, lifting a pale white hand from where it had fallen to rest at her sternum. Placing the butt of his staff on the floor, both Baby-tooth and Jack stood vigil over her while they waited for the Guardians to come. He couldn't bring himself to remove his sweatshirt from her, letting out a shaky breath as he briefly looked away. Footsteps sounded behind him, and he pulled his hand away from hers.

"_Jack! _You're back!"Tooth was ecstatic. Her headlong sprint was quickly stopped by his cool glance at her. He was surprised—if a robot could feel surprise—at how ill she looked, at how her wings had lost their force and luster.

"This is your stop, Baby-tooth," he muttered to the fairy on his shoulder. He reached with a soft hand to cup her in it, gazing at her with true emotion while her eyes filled with tears and she abruptly hugged his cheek. "Have a good one, alright? You'll be fine, I know you will. You're a tough little one."

Tooth looked at Baby-tooth as she reluctantly floated over, then at Jack again. "What... Jack, where did you go? What happened? Why is there... so much blood?" He stared at her for a moment before realizing that Sera was hidden in shadow. He took a breath.

And moved out of the way.

"_Oh god." _Tooth half gasped, half whimpered, taking a step back as she covered her mouth with her hands. Her horrified eyes met his, seeing the answer in his eyes as to what had happened.

"This is your fault." His gaze was cold as he included the newly arrived North and Bunnymund in that. "All of you. If you had believed in me, if you had just given me the chance to explain, this wouldn't have happened. Sera," he said, his voice breaking. He swallowed, his voice rasping once again ruthlessly as he stared all of them down. "Sera would still be alive if you all had trusted me. This is _your _fault."

Silence. There was no sound in the entire world except for the energy humming in his ears, lending that white-blue tint to his both enraged and lamenting vision. Their stunned expressions, their sickly selves taking the beating without protest had nothing to say, no defense to the guilt he spat at them. He pulled himself together with a shuddering breath, letting the sorrow drip down his face rather than admit to it by wiping them away. He had done enough crying to last himself a lifetime, and he closed his eyes yet again to pull himself together. When he opened them, his face was expressionless with the frigid, unfeeling emptiness he so desperately desired.

"And now she's your responsibility."

_Goodbye._

He walked past them. They let him go without stopping him, let him leave without so much a sound. He didn't look back, didn't see their faces, didn't see Sera. He had said his last farewell, said the last words he needed to say before he could go, stored up the last memories he needed of the brief friendship and belief he had enjoyed to last him forever. He made it to the outdoor platform that exposed himself to the sky before someone finally stopped him.

"Jack." Tooth's voice was shaking with unashamed tears. He didn't stop. "Jack, _please."_ He made it to the middle of the platform before he finally acquiesced to her begging.

"I know I can't ask you to stay or to forgive us, but Jack, _I'm sorry." _She started sobbing from behind him, her words full of guilt. "I'm _so sorry._ I'm sorry that none of us, that _I _didn't believe you. I'm sorry that—that—Jack, please. Please, just take Baby-tooth with you. Don't let the three of us make you lose anyone more than you already have."

"No." His voice was wooden as he stared off into the sky. He let his voice trail over his shoulder, not turning around to see their pleading gazes. "There's no place for her where I'm heading."

Tooth paused, desperately reining in her sobs. "Where... where are you going?"

And, finally, some vestige of expression made it to his face in the form of a feral parody of a smile. His fists tightened, and he tilted his head slightly towards his shoulder so that the moon would reflect off his bared fang, his profile.

"After Pitch."


	11. Back in White

A sudden, frosty gust of air was all the warning given before a small portion of the roof exploded, Jack having carved his own way into Pitch's subterranean palace. He landed on the roof of one of the spires, giving way to a blaze of ice that warped the surfaces of the cave and turned his palace of darkness into a frozen dungeon one might see in the depths of an ancient snow globe.

All these emotions—anger, pain, sorrow, frustration—boiled in his blood, bubbling, seething with black hatred and power, giving way to adrenaline that_ burned_ with the need to act, the need to roar and rant and rage and _explode. _There was no numbness now to smother it, no quiet keys of the piano to soothe away the fire writhing in his head, in his screaming soul, in his veins, in the muscle and sinew that bound the flames to bones that yearned to be broken, to be fractured and crushed into shards. The only sound in his ears was that of a broken bow scraped against the strings of a shattered violin, matching the pounding and the condition of his heart.

Broken.

Images of her were seared into the backs of his eyelids, of her laugh and her smile and her death. Ironically, they fed the inferno of his emotions that prevented him from blocking her out, she, a bizarre confoundment he had only known for barely a day, his one steadfast believer that had somehow become his first and only friend with her insane sense of humor. She was intertwined with all the griefs, the failures, the disappointments, the bitterness, the hollowed and superficial emptiness of his three hundred years of existence. She was the knife that had ripped open a festering scar, and Pitch was the hand who had wielded it.

There was no target at which he could vent his retribution to, no one but himself. Only stone answered his already blood-splattered, band-aid-smothered fist as he leapt down to the ground, reverberations shaking the air and spreading cracks outwards from him. Above, the surviving fairies' fluttering of wings were silent as they sat in their cages, unable to fly where Baby-tooth had possibly due to her proximity to him. They regarded him with their sad eyes, their bodies even more frail with sickness and hardship as they took his own despair. There was no way for him to get them out, no time. He had an appointment with Pitch, after all.

Where his feet stalked, frost filled the cracks scattered across the floor. He lacked the will, the sanity to reign in his power, and it roped out of control. Approaching Pitch's twisted parody of a globe, ice similarly crawled over the rusted metal, the dark voids empty of faith, of hope. As cold consumed the broken sphere, so too did it settle into his soul. There was no light in either the world or said soul; save, perhaps, that of a single persistence that refused to go out.

_Jamie._

His eyes widened ever so slightly as he realized who the light belonged to, enough to reel in the explosive amounts of energy he was letting off. The cavern was no longer threatening to drop to subzero temperatures, and he staggered away slightly. Jamie. He exhaled as he withdrew that power into himself, forcing it to wrap around his form and take him to the only source of belief in the world as he reminded himself of his priorities. Jamie wasn't his responsibility; if the guardians wanted to keep their status as the almighty, they would be doing their damnedest to make sure that one kid continued believing in them. He was there for Pitch, and only Pitch, who would no doubt be closing in on him just as the Guardians were. And yet, despite this, he found himself floating towards Jamie's window, his feet alighting on the same windowsill Baby-tooth had mimed Sera's struggle on. He peered inside, his blood-splattered body framed by black skies that were swirling as though whatever gods existed had stirred them into hell.

Jamie was locked in a deep, harrowing conversation with his stuffed rabbit. He was tempted to laugh in sick amusement, but he recognized that look of despair, of hopelessness on his so much younger, more innocent face. Jamie was losing the faith that had lasted him so long, the faith that sustained the Guardians for thousands years. It wasn't his problem whether or not Jamie believed; he had never had, never needed the belief that they held so preciously, so greedily to their bosoms. Regardless of what he felt, his body ignored him and sent a wintry gust that blew open the window. Jamie started, his eyes taking in the stormy skies with a sudden fear as Jack stepped into the room. He knew that he was invisible, knew that that that terrified gaze went right through him, and yet, once again, he was unable to stop those same trails of frost from spiraling outwards on the ground. By this point, his mind was a broken bystander while instinct ruled him, giving him that edge he needed to destroy Pitch with. Jamie alternated his gaze from his iced room and the snow drifting softly about before locking gazes with Jack. He saw, and he believed.

And yet _he_ felt nothing.

"Was it really that easy, all this time?" A ragged chuckle escaped him as he rested his staff on his shoulder, turning around to gaze out the window. How odd it was that he had lost his first believer, and yet gained another one amidst the darkness that swirled outside. Wasn't he getting what he had always wanted? Belief? "Come on, Pitch," he muttered, his expression tightening dangerously. He didn't want pity, didn't want faith or dependency on him anymore. All he wanted was to choke the life out of the infamous King of Nightmares. Nothing answered him except the whipping of the wind and the gaze he felt boring into his back.

"Oh, they're real, alright," he said without turning in answer to the desperate confusion in Jamie's mind. "Real stuck-up and real assholes." His teeth were clenched against the built up rage that made itself known once again, and when he finally looked over at Jamie, the fear in his brown eyes were directed at _him,_ not at Pitch. It was just another stab to the heart, another twist of the knife that he was quickly growing familiar of, but harsh enough to loosen the dark bands of hate that held him captive just enough. He sighed, coming over to crouch at the foot of Jamie's bed. He was becoming all that he loathed, and yet a part of him was too numb to care.

"I'm sorry. I've just been having a really, really bad day. You can probably tell." Was that humor creeping its way into his raw voice? He felt like laughing again, like madness was writhing through his brain. Like this fire in him was burning his sanity into ash along with his very being. Sera would have had something to say about it, something witty poking at the state he was in. Too bad she was dead.

He missed her, missed her cheer and optimism and quirkiness, but he realized life was all a joke. Life, with its horror and hate and all-around shittiness, just wasn't for him. Maybe he would have realized it even if his heart hadn't been broken. Maybe suicidal hate and self-loathing would have inevitably taken residence in his soul, even if she hadn't died. Maybe he had always been destined to fall, to become a monster. He would learn to make suffering his sanctuary, learn to laugh at an eternity of despair. He would make agony his paradise, would stay frozen in isolation and rot with forevermore virgin lips. He would embrace the warming flames of hell with a smile on his face.

He would realize that insanity always was, and forever would be his only love.

And finally, that cold clarity of hatred thrummed through his blood again, granting him his desire. Tonight, it would end, for Pitch anyways. For the world, and all its suffering inhabitants. For him? He was doomed to go on, to carry this burden for all time. He accepted it. Welcomed it, even.

He would enjoy it.

The window broke as he passed it with a sudden lack of care for Jamie, the glass vibrating as it shattered. Below, the Guardians finally arrived as their sleigh completely broke down in the front yard, their shriveled mockeries of themselves gazing upwards as he lifted into the air once more. He felt no compassion, no sympathy for them. What was happening now was punishment for all the sins of the world, and he would take his own without complaint.

"Looks like the party is here," Jack called out into the thundering sky, the boiling clouds. His hair stirred in the roar of the wind, lightning illuminating his bloodied, scraped form and giving him the look of a young god, beautiful in madness. He bared his teeth in challenge of whatever deity cared to answer it, his eyes shot through with electric power staring at the moon's obscured form. "Come out, come out," he snarled, though whether he was speaking to Pitch or the Man in the Moon was unclear.

"My, my," a voice silky in confidence called out from behind him. Pitch was mounted on a gigantic monstrosity of a horse, his form radiating smugness. "Look at you! Magnificent; it's a shame I didn't kill her sooner. Who knew a human would play such a significant role in tipping the balance?"

"I'm not here to talk," he said with a cold fury. "Just do me a favor."

"Oh? I'd be glad to assist. It's the least I can do, after all, for killing your little pet." Pitch cocked his head quizzically at him, his lips parting to reveal sharp, grinning teeth. His own returned the smile, the slight tilt at the corners the only hint he gave before he let loose the beast raging in his skull, in his chest.

_Shut up and die._

Where there was only shadow before now rose a massive tide of crystallized ice, of silver wraiths and razor-sharp tendrils. He gave himself up to it, letting it engulf him as it shot towards Pitch, chasing after trails of fleeing sand. Pitch stood his ground, only to have his return attack enveloped by frost. Darkness and cold embraced like long-parted lovers, spreading their taloned fingers throughout Jack's consciousness and feeding the fires of his hatred. Where light and hope had died out in his soul, vengeance had taken root, giving him purpose where he had none. Under his onslaught, yellow eyes narrowed in reassessment before vanishing in a cloud of biting sand. The ice behind Jack's back parted to the sweep of a scythe, and he spun around with his own wave of blade-like shards heralding the crook of his staff.

Both of them stared at each other through slitted eyes, and both of them lunged for each others' throats.

From the start, it was brutal, vicious, and intense. This was the battle that would decide the fate of the world, the unavoidable conflict between those who paraded in arrogant righteousness and those who openly succumbed to the blackness inside of them. He was championing the former where their Guardians could not, representing the cliched forces of all that was good and holy and sacred, and yet he couldn't pretend he was one of them anymore. He was no saint, no martyr. He wasn't fighting for _them._ He was fighting for himself, for the whirlwind of emotions seething through his mind. He was fighting for the memory of green eyes, of an ever present smile and baffling humor.

He was fighting for her.

He saw the waning of confidence on Pitch's face, saw the absorption of his sand giving him pause. "This... is... unexpected," he called over the roar, the screech of scraping ice. No respite, no mercy given. This was justice, in its most unforgiving and cruel form. This was compassion, in its most warped and twisted parody.

This was _revenge_.

His mouth full of fangs was moving, speaking words meant to unsettle where sheer force could not. They were but buzzing in the screams drowning out all sense of sound, of sanity in Jack's ears. They whispered, they manipulated, but they couldn't penetrate the emptiness inside his skull, the hollowness in his heart. He didn't pause as the ice raged uncontrollably around him, hungering for every piece of life that cowered in this dark, dark world, didn't give him the chance to speak his poison. There was only the burn of protesting muscles, the slide of sinew and bone as he attacked Pitch relentlessly with both staff and blizzard. There was only the howl of the wind, only the shrieks of the damned.

Only madness.

Where once curled strands of venom-laced blood, of ultramarine cinders, now coiled sprays of onyx shards, of jet smoke as Pitch resorted to invading his mind. He was stronger, so much stronger after having gorged himself on the fear of the entire human race, and found Jack's defenses already cracked and bleeding. His limbs were quick to succumb, his fingers twitching and losing their grip on the staff as it tumbled with a clatter to the ground hundreds of feet below. His head snapped up, his eyes eerily wide, and the ice dissipated after slicing a million cuts welling blood into his bare skin. Pitch warily met his, as if to examine his handiwork, and Jack realized that he wasn't alone anymore. He had what he craved—an end to the pain, to having to think and care and feel anymore. An easy trip to hell.

And now he had someone, perhaps even companion to share it with.

Some part of him cried out, resisting Pitch's control even as it died out. A voice, one he recognized—why did he feel like he knew it so well?—screaming, railing against it. What lone candle in the distant window, what spark of happiness he had left flickered out, and the knife twisted again. Crushing his heart, sinking itself hilt-deep into its already fractured remains.

Some part of him felt remorse, felt the pain that made him human. Some part of him felt sorry, felt wistful for what might have been.

_All_ of him shattered.

* * *

"Go fish."

Sera sipped her caramel frappuccino as Sandy drew a card from the deck in the middle, absently stretching her arms in the warm sunlight. She eyed his poker face in speculation before picking a random number off the top of her head.

"Got any nines?"

Sandy shook his head, the shape of a fish poofing into existence above his head. She slid the top card into her hand, staring at it as it wriggled out of her hand and huffed in indignation before waltzing off into the crowd of pedestrians walking around them. After a moment, she shook her head.

"Limbo, it's a weird place."

Sandy nodded in agreement, a two taking place of the fish above his head with a ringing sizzle. She relinquished her card with a sigh as he eventually won again after several more turns. The cards were once again stacked neatly in the center of the table as the both of them leaned back in their chairs, gazing around at the busy street and sipping their individual drinks. Sandy had ordered some sort of exotic tea from the ghostly waitress, while Sera herself luxuriated in being reunited with her coffee. They stayed this way for awhile, watching those walking past them.

"That one looks a bit like North," she noted, pointing at a bulky man in a business suit. "Must be the beard." Again, Sandy nodded, and again, there was silence. The puff of sand in her face distracted her from her drink, and when she looked up, a golden clock had appeared above his head. She regarded it thoughtfully, frowning slightly as she tried to remember how long they had been here. "Um... I don't know. What do you think?"

A complicated strand of numbers poofed up, causing her to stare at it for awhile. Eventually, she gave up, causing Sandy to sigh. Time here was a bit of a complication; neither of them knew how long they had sat at this table, playing card games and drinking endless amounts of coffee and tea.

"I'm bored." Another nod. Another bout of silence.

She snapped her fingers, and a TV randomly popped into existence in the middle of the sidewalk. The ghostly dudes kept on walking right through it, and she let out another sigh. When asked what he wanted to watch, Sandy clapped excitedly and summoned a rectangle shape above his head with legs and arms.

"Spongebob? Again?" Yet another enthusiastic nod. Said show began playing on the TV, enrapturing Sandy entirely as he watched the sponge cook some Krabby patties up. She watched his reactions more than the actual cartoon, finding it amusing how his attention was so easily caught by the modern show. Really, these people had to get out into the world more.

She had dozed off when a hand clamped on her shoulder, causing her to start violently. Another gripped her jaw, which she promptly bit before hurling her frappuccino at her attacker. The cards soon followed as he spun her chair around, gripping her shoulders tightly.

"Help! I'm being raped! Sandy, stop watching Spongebob and _help _me! Fuck it, let me go or _so help me, I'll shove a pineapple up your ass!" _Whatever other words she might have shouted were interrupted by the intense gaze of silvery-white eyes, as bright as the moon. She was unable to tear her eyes from them, and they blocked out her entire vision as they _became _the moon, only to fade into pitch black. She stared wildly, seeing nothing but darkness, and then screamed.

It took her a moment before she realized that no sound came forth. She reached for her throat in panic before her hand smacked painfully into something above her. Trying to sit up, her head slammed into the same thing, eliciting another silent ouch from her. She carefully felt around her, realizing that she was trapped in some sort of box, and the knowledge that she was _stuck _was enough to send her into a renewed panic. Her hands slammed into the roof inches above her as she gasped for air, struggling to speak words that wouldn't come out.

_Help._

Finally, the door of the coffin swung open, allowing her to scramble out with shaking limbs. _This is why I wanted to be cremated,_ she thought, her internal voice wry where her external one was silent. She couldn't stop trembling, couldn't stop her eyes from wildly gazing around at her surroundings. The moon shone brightly on the platform, illuminating an arctic landscape that her prison of ebony wood had been overlooking.

What the hell?

Behind her, North's workshop was despondent and seemingly empty. She reached over to pinch herself, only to be stopped by the sight of her skin. She was completely white, with silver shadows playing against her form. Even her hair was white, she noticed unhappily, and she would bet her eyes were too. The only color on her was the rippling blue of Jack's sweatshirt, contrasting against the snowy background she might have otherwise faded into. She stared, and stared, and stared. Nothing happened. She continued staring.

North's snow globe eventually and mysteriously rolled over as she continued staring, its collision with her foot causing a portal to pop up. She stared at that, too, and moonlight coalesced over it, bathing it in silvery radiance.

Finally, she forced herself to blink, to breathe. _Moon-dude, if you can read my mind, you are an inconsiderate, manipulative prick who works only for his own purposes. Also, lollipops. Also, get out of my mind. Anyone can tell you it's not a safe place. Don't believe it? _She conjured up a scene of dancing European beach male models._ There, see? _

Her attempts to scare off whatever possible mind-readers were near had no effect on the portal, or the beam of light. She would have sighed if she could have, except _someone _had brought her back to life _with no fucking voice._ Throwing her hands up in the air in exasperation would suffice, she supposed. She looked into the swirling mass of stormy darkness before her, wincing at it and steeling herself. Her eyes narrowed, and she put on imaginary sunglasses for bad-ass-effect.

_Cover me. I'm going in. _She tried to come up with some sort of war-cry she could shout like a madwoman as she tentatively took a tiny step forward. That is, if she could shout anyways. Sigh. Her bad-ass-ness was seriously being limited.

_This. Is. Sparta! _Nope. Wasn't going to work. _For Narnia! _Nope. She pinched the bridge of her nose, feeling the wind behind her pushing against her insistently. _Calm down, sheesh. This is very important._ It picked up its speed, blowing her hair in front of her face, and she acquiesced with a sigh.

_Fuck shit up!_

She stepped through the portal.


	12. Together

Instead of confetti and dramatic music greeting her as she stepped out of the portal, the only welcome she got was a staff—_Jack's _staff—to the foot. Whatever heroic pose she might have made was reduced to hopping on one foot and clutching the other in pain, her lack of a voice somewhat saving her dignity as she mentally let loose a stream of agonized curses. Looking upwards, she saw Pitch's nightmares turn their menacing gazes on her in place of the blue, wintry eyes she had hoped to find. Her own darted around her as she was surrounded, finding no trace of mercy in their horsey expressions.

_Uh. 'Sup?_

They lunged for her with their sharpened hooves and jagged teeth, and she ducked with an unheard scream. Grabbing at the staff with frantic fingers, she brought it up and pointed it at the nearest nightmare.

Nothing happened.

_Are you kidding me?! _Wasn't she some sort of awesome spirit or something, now? Why the hell were there no laser beams shooting out of her eyes? Had she come back to life only to die again? She held out a hand, willing for flowers, rainbows, _anything_ to shoot out, only to have it nearly bitten off. So be it. She brought the staff over her shoulder, daring for them to come at her again and grinning with reckless bravado. Throw caution to the wind and all, right? Ride on the wild side? Be a total rebel? She had nothing to lose; it was the end of the world, and she was going to live like there was no tomorrow—because there _wasn't. _

_Bring it on._

"Sera!"

There was a loud bang as a colorful cloud of smoke descended over them. She took the opportunity to spearhead a path through the swarm of nightmares, sprinting hell-for-leather. Again, the familiar accent called out, and she slid to a halt, looking behind her through the drifting smoke. Tiny, scampering paws at her feet answered her unspoken question, and she looked down to see the most _adorable_ rabbit in the entire world glaring up at her with furious green eyes.

Bunnymund.

"Didn't think I'd see you again." She cut him off, grabbing him with her free hand and hoisting him onto her shoulder as she broke into a run again. Even if she could have said something, there was no time to talk. The streets were completely occupied by nightmares, and she flung open the door of the nearest building. Inside, it was abandoned save for dark sand crawling along the floor and engulfing the walls. She stared as it swallowed the door behind her, leaving nothing but wave after wave of sand, sand, and more sand.

"The stairs! _Go!" _She darted up the stairs, silently thanking all those mandatory cardio workouts that she had forced herself through as she took the steps three at a time. Behind her, the stairs burst into an explosion of splinters and dust as snapping teeth chased after her, ripping them apart. She flung open the door to the rooftop, her breathing labored, and spun around, backing away from the mass of nightmares that tore the door off its hinges and surrounded her once more. At her back, there was a sharp drop into sheer darkness—one that she wouldn't survive if she fell.

They were cornered.

Above, a brief, surprised laugh. Pitch reined in his steed across from them, cocking an eyebrow at her. "I thought I killed you already. Ah, well, I won't complain. I'll gladly do it again."

She stared at him, slowly pulling Bunnymund from her shoulders and holding him protectively to her chest. Then, without waiting to see what he would do, she showed him her middle finger before vaulting off of the roof.

She landed with a rolling motion, once again taking off at a sprint on the adjacent roof. Her pulse was thrumming, her lips were grinning in exultation and recklessness. _Looks like all those parkour videos on Youtube paid off. _"The others should be over there," Bunnymund shouted over the roar of infuriated monstrosities. "If we can regroup with them, we might be able to make a last stand." She nodded in response, and once again leapt off the railing without hesitation.

_This _was the glory, the flames she wanted to go down in. Racing against the very personification of evil himself? _This _was the legend that she had always craved in her normal, boring, stressful life. The adventure, the adrenaline, the feeling that she was actually part of some daring epic, some poet's tale? _This _was how she wanted to die.

Fighting, like a B.A.M.F.

Again, she skidded to a stop, her speed brought to a halt by the lifeless, corpse-like body of Jack lying on the next rooftop she landed on. Her eyes widened and her grin faded as she dropped down to a crouch, her hand letting go of Bunnymund and finding his. _Oh no. Jack, you idiot, get up! _Bunnymund tugged frantically at her arm, his claws latching into the sleeve of her swearshirt as the nightmares quickly caught up.

"_We need to run!_ Sera, stop! He's under Pitch's—"

She slapped Jack across the face.

And holy Batman, wasn't that just a perfectly. Bad. Idea.

His eyes shot open, devoid of expression and colored the blue, blue shade of madness. He stared at her, and she stared at him, and his hands latched onto the staff still in her own. A rippling tide of cold stung her palm, causing her to tear away from him in pain.

"—control," Bunnymund finished.

_...Oops?_

Ice brutally attacked both them and the nightmares surrounding them, ripping uncontrollably and without care. He might be under Pitch's control, but he didn't seem to rationalize who were his enemies and who weren't. The only thing he was aware of was a horrified, blanched face and an irritating rodent, and he lifted his staff to terminate them.

"_Move!" _Bunnymund tackled her, causing the both of them to fall off of the roof and slam into a pile of garbage. Above, frigid darkness pulsated, seeking for their blood. She sat up with a groan, plucking a banana peel off of her head as flies stirred around them. Not so glorious, now. "Hide," he hissed, burrowing deeper into the garbage.

_Ew. I prefer to die with at least _some_ dignity._ Her silent protest went unheeded, and she held her breath as he dragged her into the pile while nightmares swarmed overhead. Eventually, they passed, turning their attention elsewhere. At least insane Jack didn't possess the logic to conclude where their obvious hiding spot was. The both of them climbed out, dusting themselves off and gagging to various degrees of vocal levels.

"You know, I'm surprised you haven't said anything snarky yet," Bunnymund said dryly.

_Believe me, that makes two of us,_ she mouthed at him as he once again resumed his spot on her shoulder. He gave her the rabbit equivalent of a raised eyebrow.

"Manny bring you back without a voice? Damn, gotta send him a thank-you note when this is all over." She smiled sweetly and proceeded to intensely scratch behind his ears, at which he eventually pleaded mercy to. "Alright, alright! Stop! Sheesh," he muttered, cutting himself off at the menacing pat she gave him. He rolled his eyes and peered at the streets, eyeing them strategically. "Our last hope is making it to North and Tooth. They should have Jamie with him; we've got to stop Pitch from getting him. He's the world's last human believer," he added at her questioningly look. "We're going to have to fang it. And don't you even _think _about going back up there after Jack. He took your loss bloody hard—we all did, but it hit him the worst. I'd bet my whiskers he used hatred instead of belief to fuel his powers, and look where that got him and Pitch. More than a few roos loose in the top paddock, eh?"

Her mouth twisted in indecision, and she sighed reluctantly. There was no time, no _hope _for Jack. They had a job to do. Save the world and all that.

She just wished it didn't hurt so much to accept it.

_What's our plan?_ Whether or not Bunnymund understood her, he was saved from responding by a high-pitched scream as Baby-tooth rounded the corner, nightmares dead on her heels. At the other end of the alleyway, more blocked off their exit, and Sera snatched her out of her frenzied flight before ramming into a door in the alleyway.

"_Crikey!" _Bunnymund held on for dear life as destruction exploded in their wake. Baby-tooth joined him on her opposite shoulder as she broke into a flat out run yet again, taking no time to orient herself as she hurled herself at another door that led deeper into the compound. _Too awesome for door knobs, _she thought frantically as she rocketed through the hallway. She might not be able to run miles on end, but she had always been built for speed. Her desire to, oh, I don't know, _stay alive _gave her the will to keep on moving where each breath was like a knife down her throat and in her lungs, and she turned a corner as the door behind her was ripped into shreds. The instant her foot touched the ground, it was back in the air again, running, running, running.

At least she couldn't waste air screaming, right? _Ah, humor, how I love thee. _She remembered her mental war-cry. Internal screaming would suffice.

A pair of delicate hands shot out of the darkness and grabbed her, causing her to nearly fall as she swerved harshly. A faint flicker of dulled iridescence and a finger held to silent lips was all she saw before she was pulled into a small room she had entirely missed in her headlong sprint. Lucky for them, it seemed as though Pitch's unicorns had missed it too, and they crept deeper into the room. Magenta eyes welling with tears met hers, and she found herself embraced by skinny arms and irrepressible joy.

"Sera?" North's Russian accent was a welcome sound, and his ever-comforting, beefy hand slapped her on the back. She found herself surrounded by life and love, with only the empty space in their hug where Jack belonged tarnishing it. Jamie wrapped his arms around her legs, and against all odds she found herself smiling.

"Pitch said that you died." Jamie's voice was shaking with shock and disbelief and _fear, _and she had to wonder what else Pitch had poisoned him with. Bunnymund answered for her, at which she was grateful for.

"The moon brought her back, ankle-biter. She can't talk or make herself useful, but she's just as annoying as before—ouch!" Bunnymund rubbed at his nose with the back of his paws where she had lightly flicked him, giving her his signature glare. She just shrugged innocently, sending him and Baby-tooth bouncing on her shoulders.

"It is good that you are back." North's voice sounded ages older than he had when she had last heard him, and his sigh was heavy. "Take the child and run. I will hold the stand here."

"Oh, no you don't," Bunnymund growled, hopping off her shoulder and standing on his hind legs to give North that same glare. "You're not doing this alone, mate."

"I agree." Tooth unwrapped her arms from her, her smile turning wistful as she lifted Baby-tooth from Sera's shoulder and nestled her into her feathered hair. "There is nowhere safe to go. Alone, we are heroic fools, to be picked off one by one as Jack himself succumbed. Together?" She shrugged. "Who knows?"

North met each of their gazes, his wrinkled cheek dimpling as he regarded them fondly. "Very well. Arm yourselves, my friends. We meet mortality and death, together."

Jamie shivered, and she knelt, offering him the silent comfort of her arms. _Poor kid, to have to deal with the end of the world and to die so young. Still, it would make for a great campfire story, right?_

_Right?_

Eventually, they were found. Sand ate away at the walls, dissolving them into black and indigo particles. The roof blew away, the ground vanished, forcing the Guardians to tighten their formation and back slowly away from said approaching sand. Above, the only sparks of color were yellow, wolf-like eyes stretching mile to mile as lighting illuminated Pitch's vast army. He, himself, looked down on their pathetic selves with an echoing laugh that parted the clouds above, showing the moon in all its silver beauty.

"Ah, my old friend," he called to the skies. "How fitting, that you should witness this. You'll be alone again." His eyes blazed as he slowly looked down at them, and his voice was riddled with mockery. "Together. Well, would anyone like to say their last words?" The Guardians remained silent, locking him out with their companionship, their strength, and his lips tightened. Her middle finger went unnoticed, she noticed with dismay, and he snapped his own fingers derisively. "Jack, do be a dear and make yourself useful. You can do that much, I hope."

Their eyes widened as he came into view, the nightmares parting for him. Moonlight played on the gaping wounds on his body, on the despairing blood and robotic expression. Where Pitch had been unable to faze them, _this _struck at their cores, seeing him as nothing but a puppet, an empty shell.

The bastard knew it, too.

Pitch grinned malignantly as frost began to crust over what little remnants of wood-paneled floor remained untouched by sand, unable to contain his glee. "What do you believe in, little Jamie? Why have _you _lasted this long? Am I to kill you too, like your little white dove of a friend there? Is that what it will take to crush your belief?" He flung out a gesturing hand, wearing darkness as a mantle and evil as a smile.

"The wonder of the world, the amazed childishness of brats?" Jamie cried out as North bowed under the sudden weight of black crystal, his sallow cheeks gasping as he sank to his knees.

"The nostalgic fondness of memories, the colorful thoughts of better times long passed?" Tooth bit her lip against a sound of pain, her hands catching her fall as her delicate wings and downy feathers were no barrier to the razors of ice that bit at her.

"Hope? Is this what's been sustaining you so long? _Hope?_ Hope is but a dream, a fickle fancy doomed to disappoint. I'm disappointed at _you, _Jamie. I thought the last believer in the world would know better." He shrugged eloquently as Bunnymund curled into a ball of frost-crusted fluff against the cold that assailed him.

"Give up, Jamie, and I may yet let you live." Sera held him tightly against her, hiding his terrified face into her shoulder as she glared upwards at Pitch. Slowly, defiantly, she stood up, sand biting at her feet and covering the last portion of unconsumed floor. She didn't look away as it crawled up her legs, its touch so cold it burned. She stared unblinkingly, and as the sand wrapped itself around her and Jamie's throats, she reached upwards.

She grasped Jamie's hand.

Where their skin touched, color crept back into Sera, turning her skin from an unnatural white back to its healthy tan. Light surrounded them, creating a shield of that spread its warmth throughout the room in a growing circle. It fed off of Jamie's belief, growing stronger as his eyes widened in remembrance, in wonder, in hope. She grinned at him, at the suddenly strong and vibrant forms of a renewed North, an incandescent Tooth, a seven-feet tall Bunnymund. At the incredulity on Pitch's face.

At the agony that wracked her body.

She collapsed, her arms unwinding from Jamie. Sand scattered away from her palms, turning a glowing shade of sunlight. Was this what was supposed to happen? She was doing it right, wasn't she?

So why did it hurt so much?

It came to her, as fire wrapped around her throat and restored her voice to her. She clenched her teeth against it, against the sound of pain that threatened to burst forth. Moon-dude, that son of a bitch. He was _using _her. He hadn't brought her back to life as some sort of mighty spirit, some sort of Guardian sidekick. She was nothing but a shell, holding in the power that was now using Jamie's belief to coalesce into a familiar football-shaped tuft of golden sand. She was just a conduit for him to resurrect the Sandman. Just a hollowed out case for him to manipulate to his purposes. Just a human, with feelings that didn't matter and anguish that was finite.

Just a pawn.

Above, there were voices raised in worry. She forced herself to lift her head with an effort that was suddenly a thousand times harder, meeting jewel-colored gazes. Sandy had joined the circle above her, his gaze all-knowing and horribly sad. She spoke a single word through clenched teeth, a single command riddled with pain.

"_Go."_

Her hand shot out, gripping Sandy's arm as he began to float away. He looked at her again, his brows drawn together slightly. It was hard, so hard to speak, and yet she forced the words out. _"_Jack. I need to..."

He understood her, even though she had broken off. His hands briefly grasped hers in a mixture of benediction, thanks, and farewell before he turned away and began spreading a web of golden sand across the dark skies.

"Sera, Sandy is... What did you do? How did you bring him back?" Tooth broke off, looking at her with horrified eyes, and she realized that her fingertips were turning translucent. "What's happening to you?" Fantastic.

"Take care of Jamie," she rasped, already approaching the open window as the walls, the floor, the roof reformed in a blur of gold. "Go!" she commanded again at their still forms. "Get Pitch. Jack is... I'll take care of..."

And that was it for talking. She maneuvered out of the window, landing with feet whose agility had been sapped by that dick-bag who masqueraded as the moon as she choked off the agony threatening to burst loose. She stumbled on streets that were bright again, skies that were peaceful, searching for him through the strands of Sandy's magic that countered Pitch's nightmarish darkness. The Guardians fought like art, like the keys of a piano, like the lyrics of a minstrel's song. The battle they waged was turned beautiful by the red blaze of agony that tinted her vision, and she half collapsed again, gripping her head with ghostly hands as a wave of stabbing misery pulsed over her.

She felt nothing but torment for a few minutes, with the moon the only witness to the slow torture that writhed through her veins. When it released her, she let out a ragged gasp and looked up. She was unsurprised to find that Jack had joined the moon in observing her, and she forced herself to her feet. He gave no sign of recognition as she approached unsteadily. He let her come closer, but his expression was still bland, his mind still under Pitch's possession.

Another step. Why was it so hard to just _walk?_ He simply watched her, her struggling attempt to reach him, her pathetic movements. Snow began falling, tangling in her once again mahogany hair, swirling around them and blocking out their view of the battle that raged above them. She felt ice suck at her rapidly fading feet, felt Jack's power begin to slice at her. That primal urge in him, that savage darkness in his mind prompted him to add to her pain, to kill her. And yet, the part that was still human, still thrashing, kept his limbs to his sides, his body motionless. So he simply looked at her, numb, unfeeling, and made no response when her blood dripped onto the street, when she came to a stop before him.

_Please let this work._

He felt tentative fingers slide into his hair, felt an ethereal body press against his, and suddenly she kissed him. _She _overwhelmed him, her scent, her lips. The memories of her that mended his own shards of pain, of agony. Her laugh, her smile. Her very _self._

His staff clattered to the ground, the snow a maelstrom around them. His arms were beings unto themselves, wrapping around her without any shell-shocked prompting. He was drowning, he was dying, and yet he was shouting, he was burning, he was breathing, he was euphoric. He was kissing her back with the same relentlessness, the same desperate need, was holding her as though he would never let go.

He was _alive_.

And when her lips pulled away, he opened his eyes to share this euphoria, this feeling that he was laughing and crying and _being _all at the same time. He sought green eyes, dancing eyes, eyes that were the threads that held his existence together, eyes that were the window to the other half of his soul.

He found nothing.

She was gone.

* * *

If any cared to tear their gaze from the tale-worthy war waged in the suburban skies between the forces of light and dark, of good and evil, they would have seen a husk of a young man leave behind a curiously crooked staff, a staff that would become the only proof that he had existed once it passed into Guardian hands for safekeeping.

They would have seem him walk with unsteady feet drenched in blood towards an ancient lake, would have witnessed the leaves wither at his passing, the leaves crust over in blood crystallized by cold and agony that would become memories of the spirit who passed through, never again to grow and flourish.

They would have seen the fragile layer of ice covering the lake splinter and crack under his feet, sending red swirls that melted into the black waters, forever to be unnaturally chilled, even in the warm, sunlit days of midsummer.

They would have seen him walk into that lake willingly, mist curling around his form, and never reemerge again.

They would have seen the unacknowledged tears, the grief lurking but a mahogany hairsbreadth away.

The pain.

And yet, there was no curious child, no well-meaning person to witness his death. There was no observer to tempt him from his path, to convince him otherwise that there was light, beauty, _hope_ to live for. There was no wisp of laughter, no innocent wonder, no drifting music of piano, of violin to prevent him.

There was no one but the moon.

Only the moon saw. Saw as the waters ripple around him, silent echoes of mourning to accompany his end. No silver moonbeam shone to stop him, no breeze of wind whispered songs of hope in his ears. Only the moon was witness to the demise of new beginnings, to the closing of a book, to the silence that heralds the end of a life, of a story.

Only the moon saw the waters close over his head, swallowing him into their onyx depths.

Only the moon saw him die.


	13. Epilogue

Life went back to normal—as normal as it could, hollowed out as it was.

The Guardians memorialized Jack's staff somewhere in the depths of North's workshop, which resumed its rapid production of toys. As both he and Sera had vanished, so too did Pitch fail to make his presence known beyond the occasional remnants of fear that had survived his destruction. His lair had been similarly razed, with Tooth's fairies once again healthy and eager to work, if shaken from their long torture at his hands.

North spent his days overseeing the creation of wonders big and small once again, occasionally hosting small get-togethers between the Guardians that became less and less frequent as time passed to the point where they rarely saw each other anymore. Elf and yeti worked side by side at creaking benches, and if they remembered a quiet night in which a human spit-fire of a girl had showed them what worlds of music lay beyond jingling bells and hoarse trumpets, their busy selves gave no signs.

Tooth spread her suddenly extremely busy schedule between organizing the recovered teeth into their appropriate filing and continuing to collect more memories. She let the experience of gaining friends and losing more teach her not to take said friendships for granted, and every moment she spent in the field was a moment spend in thanks for the lessons she had learned. On those rare days in which she found a moment of respite from her duties, she spent them simply breathing and enjoying the fragile sunset, the delicate beauty of a bloom before it withered and frosted. These, too, became less common as the sun rose and fell, over and over, repeating its endless dance with the moon.

Baby-tooth became her lieutenant and confidante, with her quick rise in ranks attributed to the time she had spent with Jack and Sera. She had grown from her experiences, with her chirping no longer so ecstatic and happy, her small self wiser and maturer. Behind these meeps were the faint hints at a story that only she had been graced with the knowledge of, a story that would die with her.

Bunnymund cleaned his warren, the egg shells a bitter reminder of the pain they had _all_ gone through. Some—not all—were carried downstream into ancient, unexplored depths full of promise and light. A few, bearing tribal designs, hints of the sheen of flickering wing, the red and greens of joviality, the scattering of blue-laced snowflake, he kept. They held a place of honor in the center of one of the groves, the meadows, the caves of eternal spring for quite awhile, and were eventually and inevitably forgotten as newer eggs were painted for the following Easters.

Jamie resumed his existence as a young boy on the cusp of the frustrations of teenagers, with his carefree existence never quite the same again. He had gone through too much to be unaffected by loss and despair, and although he wore a grin like a mask, it never quite reached his eyes with the same effect it used to. He told his sister stories of the Guardians, ensuring that she would never grow up without seeing them, and her stalwart belief replaced his own faith shaken by grief and death.

Sandy once again soothed the minds of the children of the world, sending thoughts of home, of peace into their subconscious. His dreams were laced with wistfulness, with the knowledge that whatever the future held, there was the hope of the _now. _More often than not his sand coalesced into flakes of sparkling snow in honor, in remembrance of friends that had long gone. He filled the nights once reigned by terror with moonlit ribbons of blissful laughter, and the world was happy again.

So did life go on.

The moon waxed and waned, its form absent on nights in which darkness was the most prominent power in the sky. Winter lost its grip on the land with an almost willing retreat, as though it had given up. Spring swelled, with rains swirling with sunshine and giving way to abundant blossoming of flowers and wildlife. The second school semester ended, with children giggling and playing as though the world had not nearly ended. Blistering heat turned into crisp, pensive autumn in which leaves colored the shades of fire littered the air, flying with their errant swirls of oranges and reds.

Winter came again.

There were no more fortuitous snow days, no more sledding escapades and spontaneous snowball fights. At times, the cold was harsh, unyielding, with all the brutality of primal nature. At other times, it chilled and dampened spirits with its desolate hints of anguish and a melancholy pain so deep it transcended all human emotions. It was at these times that the Guardians' work was the hardest, combating the regret and the sadness and the agony and the heartache with all they had.

Even the moon felt it.

There was perhaps only one place in the entire cosmos that matched this mourning, this grief. In some undefined plane of existence, some evanescent layer of smoke and mist, the skies rained knives of unacknowledged black sorrow. Trapped once again in limbo, she wandered in search of companionship, of Jack. When hope ran out, when the realization that she was alone dawned, _that _was when she truly realized that she was done.

That it was over.

She tried, tried to keep that hope alive. She recreated her life of a college student struggling to pay the bills, walked through it blindly believing. For a time, it worked. She was happy. She was breathing and running and laughing again.

She was alive.

She was too cynical to have those dreams last, though. Some part of her was always aware that the miserable world she had created for herself wasn't actually real, and eventually that part won out. She spent her days numb, struggling to recall the timbre of his voice, the way he smiled. She drew, she created, she filled her world with music and beauty just to remember that exact shade of blue.

She existed.

Her drawings became more haphazard to the point where every single one was torn, their pieces of paper scattered to the wind and reflected in the cracks of the sky, the earth. The marvels of architecture, the technological advancements crashed to the earth in plumes of dust and despair. The oceans dried up, leaving nothing but desert. The clouds blocked the sun, the moon, filling her days with darkness and cold.

And when there was nothing but horizon as far as the eye could see, she simply stared up at the sky and _was._

Through the frozen state of her being, the moon saw, and pitied. Some part of the beauty she had created, some part of her poignancy had touched a part of him that had long been thought dead. As the seasons passed, her hurt remained the one constant. He had no desire for such a companion through the long years of eternity, and so he created a world for her in which she would be happy in. He spun starlight and flame into one, spanning the lengths between her bubble of isolation and a place where she would find peace with a bridge of fire.

Where bare feet unused to walking touched, life spread in the form of flourishing greenery, in renewed song. She walked forth, foliage cushioning her feet, and when the icy shores of a lake long forgotten melted under her, she continued walking. Moonlight urged her forward, and waters rippled before her in parting. She walked forth, ice writhing around her form, and the waters swallowed her head.

She had forgotten what it meant to feel pain, what it was like to know the wolves of cold and hunger. Her breath was stolen by the glacial frost, and bubbles of air were trapped under ice that reformed over her head. The ground her unsteady feet had been carefully treading sloped away sharply, and in the darkness she lost her sense of direction completely as she sank impossibly deep. In the depths of that infinitely wide lake, she felt her lungs burn for air, felt her heart pulse once, twice.

Felt the arms close around her waist and pull her towards the moon.

Ice slid apart as they surfaced, welcoming them to a new life, a new world, a new beginning. In the silver radiance of the moon, she saw glistening eyes of midwinter blue regard her, eyes that she could have never have forgotten, and the corners of her lips trembled, tilting upwards.

_You forgot your sweatshirt._

The first sound in that life, that beginning, was that of an irrepressible laugh.


End file.
